Jeff's Lunchbreak

Well, I've pretty much abandoned my old goal of updating the static pages at least once per month. My blog has really taken over as the main source of new content for this site. Still, some content I want to publish still belongs with the static pages, and I've just put up something new - another factoid page, Factoids Debunked & Verified, Part V. This one deals mostly with geography. It's a fairly even mix of truth and falsehoods.

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Aug 20 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've been browsing through the comment thread over on Bad Astronomy in the post on Prop 8. Aside from the religious and bigoted arguments, one of the most prevalent I've seen from opponents to marriage rights is that this goes against democracy - the people voted, and now a judge has overturned it. One person even called it 'unconstitutional'. I've got to wonder - do these people even know how our government works? To spell it out for them, we have legislative, executive, and judicial branches. Legislative legislates laws. Executive executes laws. And judicial judges laws. I know - pretty complicated. So, when a law gets passed, even if it's voted on by the people, higher courts can determine whether the law itself is unconstitutional. It's part of that whole balance of powers thing. Now, if you don't like the Constitution, you can pass ammendments to have it changed, but I kind of like the idea that the Constitution limits the authority of government.

To tell the truth, though, I just can't think of any good reason why gay marriage shouldn't be allowed. I've already written about this extensivey (while I was still a Christian, no less). Although I have slightly different views now (without using the Bible as a basis for morality, I no longer see any problem at all with homosexuality), I don't think it would be worth writing something new on this, so I'll just link to those previous essays I've written on the issue.

Legality of Homosexual Marriage, Part I
Legality of Homosexual Marriage, Part II

I included this link in that second entry, but it's definitely worth pointing out here.
10 Reasons Why Gay Marriage is Wrong (Satirical)

Posted by Jeff on Tuesday, Aug 10 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible was written by A.J. Jacobs. As the name suggests, for a year, he attempted to live his life by following the Bible literally, from observing the Sabbath, to not wearing mixed fiber clothes, to stoning an adulterer (he threw a pebble), to all the other myriad rules. The first 3/4 of the year were dedicated to just the Old Testament, since Jacobs is (nominally) Jewish (he described himself as "Jewish in the same way the Olive Garden is an Italian restaurant. Which is to say: not very."), and the latter part of the year to adding in the New Testament rules.

In the following paragraphs, I'll discuss quite a few things from the book where I disagree with Jacobs, but don't let that bias you from reading the book. This is a blog, so it's my duty to disagree and be vocal about it, so I've focused on the areas of the book that I disagree with the most. But overall, the book is very good, and very thoughtful.

Jacobs did seek advisors in his quest, people to help him understand the meaning of different passages. He explained in several parts what some of the more traditional, non-literal interpretations were of different passages (which, of course, he didn't follow, since his quest was to follow a literal interpretation). He also explained how people got around some the contradictions in the Bible, and a bit of the rationale many Christians use for no longer following Old Testament rules. It wasn't simply one long running joke about how silly Biblical literalism is - it was in many ways a sincere attempt to understand Judaism and Christianity.

I do question Jacobs' motivation somewhat. Consider this passage from when he went to Jerusalem.

As I wander over to a café near the hotel for a bagel, I realize something: Walking around Jerusalem in my bilbical persona is at once freeing and vaguely disappointing. In New York - even though it's home to the Naked Cowboy and gene Shalit - I'm still unusual enough to stand out. But in Israel I'm just one of the messianic crowd. A guy with strange outfits and eccentric facial hair? Big deal. Seen three dozen today. Jerusalem is like the Galápagos Islands of religion - you can't open your eyes without spotting an exotic creature.

It seems as if Jacobs relished in the attention he was getting, so I think that vanity might have had a bit to do with his quest, and not just attempting to understand the religious mindset.

There's almost always a church youth group at the soup kitchen. I have yet to see an atheists' youth group. Yeah, I know, religious people don't have a monopoly on doing good. I'm sure that there are many agnostics and atheists out there slinging mashed potatoes at other soup kitchens. I know the world is full of selfless secular groups like Doctors without Borders.

But I've got to say: It's a lot easier to do good if you put your faith in a book that requires you to do good.

Jacobs included the appropriate disclaimer, but doesn't seem to have really given it the weight it deserved. Us atheists and agnostics don't form atheist/agnostic charity groups because it's a bit superfluous. If you want to help feed people, you don't start an atheist soup kitchen, or an agnostic food drive. You start a plain old soup kitchen, or a plain old food drive. Or, more often, you go volunteer at one of the the charities that's already been founded.

As far as youth groups, hasn't Jacobs ever heard of the Scouts or Campfire? I know, technically Boy Scouts have to be religious, but it's mostly a secular organizations, with little focus on religion. I know that as a kid I did a lot more charity work with my Boy Scout troop than with my church youth group. My daughter is in Girl Scouts, which in their policy officially declares the organization to be secular ("Our movement is secular and is founded on American democratic principles, one of which is freedom of religion.") My daughter has done quite a bit of volunteer work through Girl Scouts.

As another anecdote, my wife and I volunteered a few times to go on a medical mission trip to Guatemala. And I'd say that 1/4 to 1/3 of the volunteers were non-believers, which is about what you'd expect if Christians and non-believers were helping equally (actually, us atheists were over represented compared to the general population, but that's not all that unexpected for such a small group size).

Jacobs can say that it seems easier to do good if you put faith in the Bible, but I'm not sure that reality agrees with him.

At one point, he described his reaction to attending an atheist meeting.

Ken has, in fact, boosted the group's membership and started some programs. But go to an atheist meeting, and you'll see why the religious lobby doesn't have to worry about the atheist lobby quite yet. You'll see why there are no soaring atheist cathedrals and why hotel room night stands don't come with a copy of Why I Am Not a Christian by Bertrand Russell in the top drawer. It's hard to be passionate about a lack of belief.

Well, yeah. The only reason why atheists are so vocal is because of the pernicious influence of religion in our society. As soon as religion stops being such a problem (i.e. outlawing homosexual marriage, trying to get creationism taught in schools, the de facto requirement that political candidates are religious, etc.), we atheists won't have so much to complain about. Like Thomas Jefferson said, "It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."

Now that I'm an atheist myself, I have no desire to go to a building just to celebrate my non-belief. I'd rather be productive. I like going to museums to learn more about the world, going to parties to enjoy time with my friends, going to my daughters school pageants. It seems silly to even think about atheist cathedrals.

In another section, he described his aunt and uncle becoming religious for the benefit it would give their children, and contemplated it for himself.

They explored several religions, including Hinduism, but ended up diving into Orthodox Judaism, since they were born Jewish.

They didn't become ultrareligious because of a charismatic leader or the truth of the Bible - they did it for the structure. And now their kids have grown up into responsible young adults...

Would I rather have Bart Simpson or one of the Flanders kids? A couple of years ago, I would have chosen the loveably spunky Bart. No question. But nowadays, now that I have my own three-dimensional son, I'm leaning toward the Flanders progeny. Yes, they may be a little creepy, they may sing loud songs about Noah's ark, but at least you know they won't spend their free time burning down the cafeteria or skateboarding off a canyon. I'd sacrifice some individuality for the knowledge that my son will outlive me.

Perhaps it's because I place such high value on truth and honesty, but this is one of the reasons I hate most for being religious. If you think God is real, and you believe all the consequences spelled out in the Bible, then it makes perfect sense to go to church and raise your children in that environment. But if you don't believe, why would you raise your kids to believe in falsehoods? It's such an intellectually dishonest position.

Besides, this is a false dichotomy. Not being religious doesn't mean behaving like Bart Simpson. You can raise your children to think about other people, and think about the consequences of their actions, without ever bringing up religion.

Attempting to follow all the rules of the Bible includes the first commandment. Jacobs tried to pray to God, which is understandably difficult for an agnostic. He had varying levels of success, depending on the day. In one passage discussing his prayer, Jacobs made a very good point.

I even find myself being skeptical of those times when my heart was near to God in the last few months. Perhaps it was an illusion. If I prayed to Apollo every day, would I start to feel a connection to Apollo?

This is a line of reasoning that I don't think enough people explore. I noticed it especially the last time I went to a mass - how much reinforcement there was to continue believing, and how hard it would be to break that cycle when you do it every week.

At the back of the book, there was an interview with Jacobs. I'm assuming that this interview was only in the paperback edition, and not the hardcover.

It was a life-changing and perspective-changing year. In the end, I became what a minister friend of mine calls a "reverent agnostic," which is a phrase I love. Because whether or not there's a God, I believe in the idea of sacredness - that rituals can be sacred, the Sabbath can be sacred, and there's great importance to them. So I'm still agnostic, but a deeply different kind of agnostic.

In some ways, I can appreciate this view. The universe is an awesome place, and we're such tiny parts of it. There are a great many things that inspire me, or fill me with a sense of reverence. However, you have to be careful when it comes to 'sacredness'. Too often, when people put something in the category of the sacred, it becomes beyond reproach, above criticism, unassailable. Nothing deserves that level of immunity, because it's possible that we could be wrong about anything.

It also risks taking those concepts to extremes. Jacobs may consider the Sabbath sacred, but others have taken it so far to where they worry about whether or not they can flip a light switch, and whether the spark that might happen should be considered lighting a fire.

As for lessons I learned, perhaps the biggest was 'Thou shalt not stereotype.' Every preconception I had was smashed when I actually spent time with these groups. I had some very narrow notions about evangelical Christians before the year. But I found it's such a varied movement that you can't make a sweeping gneralization about it. For instance, I met an evangelical group called the Red Letter Christians. Instead of focusing on, for instance, homosexuality, the Red Letter Christians stress the literal words of Jesus and his teachings on compassion and peace.

This is a very good lesson, I think, for two reasons. First, taking Jacobs at his word, it shows the dangers of stereotyping. I have friends with all different types of religious beliefs, from atheists like myself to young earth creationists. People can get so caught up in religion that they forget that it's just one aspect of our lives. There's so much more that we do, that defines who we are, that it's easy to get along with someone while still disagreeing over religion.

On a more cynical side, though, Jacobs' observation reveals how people who do bad things aren't the evil villains of comic books. He discussed his visit with Jerry Falwell, and how friendly the man was in person, and how mundane the church service was. But don't forget that Falwell founded Liberty University, and co-founded the Moral Majority. The people in those organizations may have good intentions, but look at all the harm they've caused. To quote a religiously themed cliche, "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions."

Q: Are you going to raise your sons differently?
AJ: After the year, my wife and I decided to join a synagogue in our neighborhood. Granted, it's a reform temple and we don't go very often. (But I do pay the annual fees. Which, from the letters they send, is a very important part). We're going to send our sons to Hebrew school. I don't care whether they become Hitchens-like atheists or believers. As long as they're good people, I'll be happy. But I thought it was a good idea to give them a basis in religion, so they'll know what they're accepting or rejecting.

I already discussed above why I don't think you should raise your children to be religious if you're not a believer yourself. It's dishonest. But that's not exactly what Jacobs is saying here. It sounds like he's trying to expose his children to religion so that they can make their own choice. But, as I'm sure is glaringly obvious to anybody reading what he wrote who isn't Jewish, he's given them a pretty limited view on religion by sending them to a Hebrew school. Why not send them to Catholic school, or a Protestant school, or a Hindu temple, or a madrasah? That's one of the problems I've noticed with many people. When they say they want to expose their children to religion so that their children can have their own choice, those people usually mean their own religion, or the religion of their ancestors if they're no longer particularly religious themselves. It's hardly ever meant to expose them to the full spectrum of religious views.

On the other hand, given how important religion is in contemporary society, it's probably not such a bad idea to expose children to it in some form, so that they'll have some type of understanding of that mindset.

So, after the whole year was over, what was Jacobs' conclusion on following the Bible literally?

Q: How did it change your view on religion? AJ: In several ways, I feel I better understand some of the great things about religion and have incorporated many of them into my life. I also learned that interpreting the Bible too literally can be dangerous. I learned that you can't follow every single rule in the Bible. There is a certain amount of picking and choosing. And fundamentalists call this cafeteria religion and they mean it as an insult. But I say: What's wrong with cafeterias? I've had some delicious meals at cafeterias. It's all about choosing the right parts of the Bible, the ones about compassion and helping your neighbor. I also learned that even the rules that seem crazy at first can have a deeper meaning.

So, after actually reading the entire Bible, and trying his best to follow it literally, he concluded that it just wasn't possible. I don't think that's much of a surprise to anyone else that's actually read the Bible.

His approach of picking the best parts sounds reasonable to anyone who's not religious themselves, but it kind of removes the whole authority of the Bible, doesn't it? Especially considering how he's contemplated using the Bible as a rulebook for his kids so that they grow up with some structure - how can you justify using it as an authoritative source when you throw out all the rules you don't like?

Anyway, as I said at the beginning of this review, I've focused on the parts of the book that I disagree with the most. Overall, it's an interesting look at just what it takes to follow the Bible literally, along with some thoughtful discussion on religion in general.

Further Reading:

• Debating The Year of Living Biblically - A dialogue on Slate
  
• Interview with A.J. Jacobs by The Friendly Atheist
  

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Jul 30 | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

For lack of time, I'm once again going to recycle my comments from a comment thread on another site for this week's blog entry.

Some of the more extreme atheists whose writings I've read seem to want to lump those that accept theistic evolution into the same group as those that accept Intelligent Design (ID). In a very broad sense, I can understand the reasoning, but I think there is an important distinction between the two concepts. Here is the first of two comments I left in a thread discussing this issue.

I know I'm late to the party (I was on vacation), but I'll have to agree with the posters who've said that theistic evolution is not nearly the same thing as intelligent design. I know ID advocates are usually pretty vague on what ID actually entails, and it's a big tent, but here are a couple quotes from Of Pandas and People, the ID textbook that was going to be used in Dover (this is recycled from another comment thread [discussed on this site here]).

First, in discussing tetrapod evolution on page 22, the book said:

Instead, fossil types are fully formed and functional when they first appear in the fossil record. For example, we don't find creatures that are partly fish and partly something else, leading gradually, in the dozens of characteristics which they exhibit, to today's fish. Instead, fish have all the characteristics of today's fish from the earliest known fish fossils, reptiles in the record have all the characteristics of present-day reptiles, and so on.

In discussing the incompleteness of the fossil record on page 25, the book said:

There is, however, another possibility science leaves open to us, one based on sound inferences from the experience of our senses. It is the possibility that an intelligent cause made fully-formed and functional creatures, which later left their traces in the rocks.

That's quite a bit different from theistic evolution, where people believe that evolution occurs just like it really does, but that God's nudged the process somehow.

As others have pointed out, it's hard for a theist to accept evolution and not believe in theistic evolution. It's like the old joke of the guy caught in a flood on his roof. Most theists see God being involved in everything, so it's no surprise that they think he was involved in evolution, as well, even if they don't have an explanation for the exact mechanism. As long as theistic teachers stick to the secular explanations of topics in school, I don't see it as a huge problem.

After a couple people posted comments disagreeing with me, I posted another comment.

SteveM,

You're right. There is a possibility that somebody could be a deist. But honestly, how many deists are there in this country? Most people who have been indoctrinated into Christianity believe in an active god who intervenes in the universe.

JacobCH,

Theistic evolution is not functionally the same thing as ID. As I pointed out with the quotes above, and as most people already know, ID is little more than creationism that refuses to unambiguously state that God is the creator. It's a tactic to get creationism taught in schools. Theistic evolution is for people who have been indoctrinated into believing in an interventionist god, but who are rational enough to recognize that evolution must have happened.

Look at it this way, to an ID advocate, if you take away the 'designer', evolution is impossible. The designer has to be there to poof irreducibly complex systems into existence, or add specified complexity, or whatever other gobbledygook they come up with. To someone who accepts theistic evolution, if you take away the god, evolution continues to happen. It's just that without the god's guidance, evolution may not have resulted in the organisms we have now, particularly humans. Yes, the god is superfluous in that case, but that's what theistic evolution is. Whereas ID tries to force the evidence to fit God, theistic evolution tries to force God to fit the evidence.

I agree that if you just drop God it makes the whole thing easier, but that indoctrination can be really hard to get past.

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Jul 23 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A few weeks back, I blogged about a case going to the Supreme Court. To recap, the Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco had a policy that for any student group to be officially endorsed by the university and receive a small stipend, it couldn't restrict membership for any reason. One organization, the local Christian Legal Society (CLS), changed its rules to exclude homosexuals or those engaging in pre-marital sex from holding leadership positions or voting. The university enforced its policy, and revoked its official endorsement of the CLS. So, the CLS claimed discrimination, took the university to court, lost, and appealed to the Supreme Court.

In my original blog entry, I already explained why I thought the CLS was clearly wrong, so I wasn't surprised to read the headline, Justices Rule Against Group That Excludes Gay Students. What surprised me, perhaps because I'm still too politically naive, is how close the vote was: 5 to 4. Nearly half of the justices sided with the CLS.

Consider the following statement from Alito, who wrote the dissenting opinion, "I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that today's decision is a serious setback for freedom of expression in this country." To me, 'freedom of expression' means the ability to say something without interference. To Alito et al, 'freedom of expression' apparently means the ability to say something, get official government endorsement for that statement, and get taxpayer money to help you spread that statement. It's like words don't even have the same meaning to them. 'Freedom' and 'entitlement' are not the same thing.

I think Stevens put it best, saying "groups may exclude or mistreat Jews, Blacks and women or those who do not share their contempt for Jews, Blacks and women. A free society must tolerate such groups. It need not subsidize them, give them its official imprimatur, or grant them equal access to law school facilities."

The good news is that at least for now, a sensible decision was reached on this issue.

Let me just quote one section of the previous blog entry, to show why I think the CLS was so clearly wrong.

To be clear, the university did not ban the CLS from convening on campus, or ban students from joining the CLS, and did not even stop the CLS from using university facilities. They just didn't officially endorse the CLS and give it the stipend that official organizations receive.

Posted by Jeff on Thursday, Jul 1 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A friend of mine sent me a link to an interesting device, known as an HHO Generator. HHO stands for 'hybrid hydrogen oxygen'. It's basically an electrolysis unit that runs off your car's electrical system, and sends the hydrogen and oxygen into the engine's air intake. The company selling the device claims gas mileage improvements on the order of 30% to 90%!

I'm skeptical. This seems too much like a perpetual motion machine. For example, you can't hook up an electric motor to an electric generator, and then have the generator power the motor. Resistance in the wires and friction in the moving parts will rob energy from the system and dissipate it as heat into the environment. In fact, if you just had a flywheel of the same inertia on low friction bearings, it would spin longer.

I drew up two quick diagrams to illustrate what I'm getting at with this HHO generator. The first diagram below is a normal car - it burns gasoline to power the engine to turn the wheels. Below that is a car with the HHO setup.

That extra loop resembles a perpetual motion machine too much. You're taking energy from the engine to split water, then trying to use that as fuel to turn the engine, and hoping to get more energy out than you're putting in. But remember, there's friction in the alternator and resistance in the wires running from the alternator to the HHO generator; when you run current through the water, only some of it goes into splitting the molecules while the rest heats up the water; and then there's also friction in the lines from the HHO generator to the intake. You're losing energy to heat in every step of that process.

Still, my friend bought that system and installed it in his car, and he insists that he's getting better gas mileage than before. So, I've tried to think of reasons why this may be the case. Here are my thoughts.

1) The hydrogen makes the combustion process more efficient, so that the engine converts more thermal energy into kinetic energy. This really seems pretty unlikely, though, especially without doing any additional modifications to the engine. First of all, the increase in efficiency would have to more than offset all the lost energy from the HHO generator. And internal combustion engines are already really efficient, especially modern engines with oxygen sensors and fuel injection that can tailor the air fuel ratio. And automotive companies are under pressure from government regulations (not to mention market forces) to make the engines as efficient as possible. Given the number of engineers working on these engines, and the amount of money manufacturers spend on development, I can't imagine that there's much room for improvement in efficiency.

2) He hasn't done enough tests. Fuel mileage is strongly dependent on driving style and other variables. A lead foot burns a whole lot more fuel than driving conservatively. Sitting at stops signs and traffic lights hurts fuel economy (even though the engine's at idle, you're getting zero miles per gallon during those times). A head wind will hurt you, while a tail wind helps. Properly inflated tires have a noticeable effect. I don't think a few tanks of gas driving around town is enough to smooth out all those variables. You either need to do some really controlled testing (an external fuel tank you can weigh on a closed course), or run thousands of miles with and without the HHO generator for comparison.

3) The hydrogen and oxygen are messing up the oxygen sensors. Engines are usually tuned to run at lower power at a stoichiometric air fuel ratio (AFR). This is when the amount of gasoline and oxygen are matched up perfectly, so there's no fuel left unburnt, and no free oxygen left. However, as the engine's power output increases, if it continued to operate at the stoichiometric AFR, it would burn hot enough to damage engine components. That's why the AFR needs to be enrichened - the extra fuel lowers the combustion temperature, keeping the engine from getting damaged. I've got some first hand experience with that - at work, we hired an 'expert' consultant to help us tune an engine, and he let the exhaust gas temperatures (EGTs) get up to 1750ºF (we usually tried to keep them below 1550º), and it literally burnt the ends off of the spark plugs.

The other problem with running too lean is that the engine could start knocking (when the fuel air mixture explodes instead of burning smoothly). That's another reason the AFR gets enrichened. I've got some first hand experience with that, too. We were tuning the engine another time (at a different shop), and we had a laptop hooked up to the engine computer that gave us real time feedback on all the variables the engine computer was monitoring. We kept advancing the timing (another variable that strongly influences knocking) to try to get the engine operating as efficiently as possible. The guy operating the dyno had run plenty of engines, so he had a good ear for it. The laptop was telling us that the engine was sensing knocking, but the guy running the dyno couldn't hear it, so we figured it was a false signal. After a few more dyno runs, we basically destroyed the engine. When we took it apart and inspected it, it had all the signs of knocking. The moral being - your ear isn't sensitive enough to reliably detect knocking at levels that are still high enough to damage your engine.

If the hydrogen and oxygen are messing up the oxygen sensors, it may be tricking the computer into running the engine leaner. This would improve fuel economy, but at the cost of higher EGTs and increased chance of knocking - both of which will reduce the life of your engine. Unfortunately, there's no way of telling on a more or less stock system. Block temperature is not a reliable indicator of exhaust temperature, because there's plenty of capacity in the cooling system to keep the block temperature low enough. And knocking isn't something you can always catch by ear.

My gut feel is that it's probably option two above. I think that with more testing, my friend will find that the HHO generator is actually hurting his gas mileage. If it turns out to be option three, though, it could be causing some serious damage to the engine. I recommended to him that he at least pull the plugs periodically to see what they look like, and that it might not be a bad idea to invest in some EGT probes and a knock sensor, either.

Anyway, after a little bit of research, I did find a few other sites discussing this (the first link below is the best). It looks like my second option above is the most likely.

• http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2008/07/water4gas.html
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_fuel_enhancement
• http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/alternative-fuel/gas-mileage/4276846?series=19
• http://www.wyff4.com/news/17036761/detail.html

It looks like maybe there could be something to these HHO generators in an engine specifically designed for them, but nowhere near as much as many of the scam artists are claiming. Plus it's analagous to octane. High octane fuel doesn't explode as easily, so some of those things that cause knocking (advanced timing & leaner mixture which I already discussed, plus higher compression ratios which I didn't mention) can be pushed harder if you have high octane fuel. So, if you have an engine designed to take advantage of high octane fuel, you can get better efficiencies. But, if you simply run high octane fuel in an engine designed for low octanes, you won't see any difference. Some of the stuff I've seen for hydrogen says that it might allow you to run leaner than with pure gasoline, but your engine and sensors would have to be designed accordingly. Simply pumping it into a stock engine wouldn't give you those benefits.

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Jun 11 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The comment thread I was arguing in over at The Chronicle of Higher Education is now officially done. Commenting has been closed, so there's no chance of adding anything new. Since I've copied all my other comments from that thread into previous entries on this blog, I figured that for the sake of completeness, I'd include the last of them here. Again, since this is reposting information instead of posting something original, I'm putting it all below the fold.

Continue reading "Done Arguing" »

Posted by Jeff on Thursday, Jun 10 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, I don't have any new entries this week, either. I got too caught up in that same comment thread on The Chronicle of Higher Education as last week, and spent too much time leaving comments there. I think I'm suffering from SIWOTI Syndrome. Like last week, if you're really interested in reading something by me this week, I've included my comments below the fold.

Continue reading "Still Arguing" »

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Jun 4 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, I don't have any blog entries this week. I've been spending too much time reading and commenting on other sites. In particular, I've been following the comment thread of this article, The New War Between Science and Religion, from The Chronicle of Higher Education. If there's anybody out there just dying to read something I've written this week, I'll copy my comments here (and some of the relevant comments of others). Since this doesn't really count as an original blog entry, I'm going to put all of it below the fold.

Continue reading "Arguing About Religion on Another Site" »

Posted by Jeff on Friday, May 28 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I usually try to avoid Ray Comfort's blog. It just sucks me in and I end up wasting too much time. But, he was mentioned on Pharyngula the other day, so I headed over to Comfort's blog out of curiosity. The post that day happened to be Mark and Albert's Common Belief, which used Mark Twain and Albert Einstein to describe how atheists, in Comfort's view, are idolaters (never mind that Comfort uses a quote from Einstein at the top of the blog to try to show Einstein as a theist). The part that got me the most was this section.

Man has always gravitated towards making a god in his own image. He does this because he doesn’t want moral accountability.

After reading the entry, I did something I'd never done before. I tried to leave a comment on Comfort's blog. For those unfamiliar, Comfort's blog is moderated, and it does have a commenting policy. Here are the guidelines.

All comments are moderated before being published. When deciding which comments to publish, we use the following guidelines:

1. Any comments we deem abusive or outside the boundaries of Christian civility will not be published.

2. Any comments that don't properly, and respectfully, capitalize the name "Jesus" and/or "God," or use these in a blasphemous manner, will not be published.

3. Any comments that include website links will not be published. (Since we are unable to fully explore every web site, the inclusion of a url may mean we choose not to publish your otherwise wonderful comment. If your web site is important to you, we suggest you include it in your personal profile.)

I can't remember now exactly what my comment was, but it was something to the effect of this.

I don't understand this 'moral accountability' argument from Christians, since Christianity seems to take away this accountability. You can be as horrible of a person as you want to be, as long as you accept Jesus before you die. Just look at Paul of Tarsus. He killed many people, but then after he converted, everything was okay. Christianity is like the ultimate 'get out of jail free' card.

I thought it was reasonable, and I thought I was following the guidelines. I even double checked on my capitalization, but it still didn't get published. Maybe it was the Monopoly simile in the last sentence. Oh well, lesson learned - don't waste time trying to comment on Comfort's blog (when I shouldn't be wasting time reading it in the first place).

As I've said before, Ray Comfort will always hold a special place on this blog. It was one of his CDs that got me motivated enough to actually start this blog, and he was the subject of my first substantive entry (third entry overall, but the first two were basically just announcements that I was starting a blog and how I was going to run it). For anyone interested in my previous entries dealing with Comfort, here they are:

• A Meandering Tale About Fundamentalism
• Ray Comfort & His Horrible "Scientific Proof" of a Creator
• Golden Compass - A Surprise at the Bookstore
• Ray Comfort: Quote Miner Extraordinaire
• Another Surprise at the Bookstore
• Another Ray Comfort Tract
• Ray Comfort - Still Ignorant on Evolution

Posted by Jeff on Monday, May 10 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I heard a story on NPR on the way in to work this week. A case is being brought to the Supreme Court by a student group, the Christian Legal Society, against the Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco. The university has had a long standing policy that in order to be officialy recognized by the university and receive public funding, student groups could not restrict membership on any basis. The local Christian Legal Society (CLS) at the university had for many years followed that policy, but in 2004, when it joined the National Christian Legal Society, it changed its rules to exclude homosexuals or those engaging in pre-marital sex. The university enforced its policy, and revoked its official endorsement of the CLS.

Well, the CLS didn't like that, so they're claiming discrimination. They want to be exempt from the rules because they claim that the rules infringe on their religious rights. To be clear, the university did not ban the CLS from convening on campus, or ban students from joining the CLS, and did not even stop the CLS from using university facilities. They just didn't officially endorse the CLS and give it the stipend that official organizations receive.

I see two issues here - receipt of public funds, and official recognition from the university. I don't see that the CLS has a leg to stand on concerning public funds, and I really don't see that they have much more of a case concerning official recognition. To be affiliated with a public institution, you have to follow the public rules. If you want a private club that excludes members for whatever reason, that's fine. Just don't expect to use my tax dollars to pay for your club, and don't whine when a university won't advertise for you.

(This reminds me of the whole brouhaha during the election season, when churches wanted to endorse candidates but keep their tax exempt status. You don't get to break the rules just by playing the religion card.)

Calvin and Hobbes on GoComics

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Apr 23 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Over Easter weekend, I went to church for the first time in years. (I was visiting family, and that same weekend my nephews were getting baptized, confirmed, and receiving first communion - all at the same mass. Since that was such an important occasion for them, I went to watch it.) It was a bit of a strange experience. On the one hand, it was all very familiar. I remembered when to sit, stand, and kneel. I remembered all the appropriate responses and prayers (even the full Nicene Creed). I felt myself reflexively wanting to make the sign of the cross and all the other appropriate gestures. I still felt the urge from my altar boy days to reach down and ring the bells when the priest was preparing communion. On the other hand, I was now watching the mass as an outsider. I was struck by just how much conditioning there was. It was easy to see how people repeating the same things week after week reinforce their existing beliefs. I realized why it was so hard to break that cycle.

Since it was Easter weekend, the Gospel reading was the story of Doubting Thomas. I'd never questioned the meaning of this story as a Christian, but now, as a non-believer, it's obvious how insidious it is. Thomas heard a group of people making claims of a very, very unlikely event. He did what any normal person would do in that situation, and demanded a bit of evidence. When Jesus showed up, he reprimanded Thomas for being skeptical. The moral of the story is supposed to be that blind faith is better than evidence! That type of thinking is exactly the problem with why rumors and urban myths are perpetuated. If everybody demanded a bit of evidence before accepting stories as true, we wouldn't need dedicated debunkers like Snopes or the Myth Busters.

At one point, I did become rather sad, when the priest started talking of praying for the deceased. It got me to thinking about all the people I knew who had died. I felt a double sense of loss - the first for when those people had died in the first place, and the second for when I finally realized that there wasn't an afterlife, and that I actually wouldn't ever get to see them again. Dealing with the death of loved ones and facing our own mortality is never easy, but at least those who have never been promised an afterlife only have to mourn once.

I didn't take communion myself while I was there. I didn't figure the priest would have been very happy to discover that an atheist had eaten the Eucharist. But to tell the truth, I wouldn't mind having a few wafers to snack on. Like I mentioned above, I used to be an altar boy, and we would occasionally snack on non-consecrated wafers. It may be an acquired taste, but I kind of miss it.

One aspect of mass that I've missed since I quit going is the singing. I was never one of those Catholics who sat there silently, or just mumbled the words during hymns. I sang. I wasn't particularly good, but I enjoyed it. So, going into church, I was thinking that I might enjoy singing hymns again. I tried on the first hymn, but I just couldn't get past paying attention to the words and the meaning of what I was singing. So I didn't try to sing anymore after that (even though I had most of the lyrics memorized and didn't need to look in the hymnal).

Anyway, those are just a few of the random thoughts I had after going to mass for the first time in years. I definitely didn't feel any pressure to return to the church, but it was an interesting experience.

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Apr 16 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've added two new essays to my Religious Essays section, along with a collection of quotes (for anyone who reads this blog regularly, the two essays will be familiar). I've also revised most of the other essays.

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Mar 19 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Christianity claims to be monotheistic (as do the other Abrahamic religions). It's right there in the first commandment. But if it weren't for the Christians' own insistence on this term, would people really label Christianity as monotheistic?

I'll ignore the trinity for this discussion. The father son relationship would certainly seem to suggest at least two deities, but let's just accept the Christian explanation, and assume that they're different manifestations of the same god.

Let's start off looking at the Catholic saints. There are patron saints for everything, from various illnesses, to occupations, to places. I remember when my wife and I were selling our house, my sister in law suggested we bury a statue of Saint Joseph in our front yard. These characters are deities in all but name.

But not all sects of Christianity accept the saints, so let's move on to another character from Christianity - Satan. Here's a being so powerful that he was able to fight a war against Yahweh. He has his own kingdom, Hell. And many sects of Christianity believe that he's powerful enough to influence events in the universe, and that he's going to wage another war against Yahweh at some point in the future.

Most Christians also believe in angels and demons. Archangels are even mentioned by name in the Bible and other religious texts, such as Michael, Gabriel, Luke, Raphael, Uriel, Metatron, and Azrael. Many Christians also accept the concept of guardian angels. So, while the angels may not be as powerful Yahweh, they do have powers that they can use to influence the world.

Now consider the Greek pantheon. Gaia was the first deity, from whom all the other gods came. After the war between the Olympian Gods and the Titans, there were only three main gods who shared control of the universe - Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades. Yes, there were other lesser gods, but they all answered to those three. It seems like this is fairly comparable to Christianity. There are two primary gods, Yahweh and Satan, and all the lesser gods answer to them. The biggest difference seems to be that Yahweh isn't just a powerful god, he's also the creator god. But other polytheistic religions also have the creator god as the most powerful one (such as Vishnu's role in Hinduism).

Considering all this, it seems that calling Christianity a monotheistic religion is mostly an issue of semantics.

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Mar 12 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In yesterday's primary, the incumbent State Board of Education member, Don McLeroy, lost to the challenger, Thomas Ratliff. I can't say how happy I am that McLeroy is going to be off the BoE. Most of the news stories I've read about the primary bring up McLeroy's stance on evolution, which is certainly a major problem, but it certainly wasn't the only one. I've covered a lot of this recently, so I'll just direct readers to this blog entry for a brief summary of McLeroy's shenanigans (English standards, social studies standards, back door dealings, 'standing up to the experts'). Or, go read this essay from McLeroy's own site, where he downplays teaching children critical thinking skills. The election was close, though, so those of us in Texas will have to remain vigilent in future elections. But for the time being, we can breathe a little easier, knowing that there's one less kook affecting our children's education.

Posted by Jeff on Wednesday, Mar 3 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It's that time again. The latest NSF report on Science and Engineering Indicators 2010 has been released (I'm actually over a month late in blogging on it, but considering that the report only comes out every two years, I figure that's not too bad). I've made previous entries for the 2004, 2006, and 2008 versions of the report. There really isn't anything new this time. The long term trends are relatively constant, and the overall literacy is still depressingly low.

First, here's the table that compares the scientific literacy of several countries. This table was taken from the section, Chapter 7. Science and Technology: Public Attitudes and Understanding. The numbers in the table are the percentage of people that responded correctly, while the correct answer is listed in parentheses after the question.

Now, here's the table detailing the U.S. history on these questions over the past several years (with the year 1985 removed to let the table fit on this page - but don't worry, the only data from 1985 was for the question about the continents).

And for something new compared to my previous blog entries on the science and engineering indicators, here's a graph of the above data to make it easier to see the trends.

Just look at those results - around a quarter of Americans think that the Sun goes around the Earth, half don't realize that electrons are smaller than atoms, and half don't know that it takes a year for the Earth to go around the Sun! Keep that in mind whenever you hear people citing public opinion polls on the validity of concepts like global warming or evolution.

It's always a bit depressing to see those numbers. It's hard to believe that the people of our nation are so ignorant. If there's one lesson to take away from these results, it's that we need to vastly improve our education system.

Update 2010-02-26: I updated the graph to add a title and labels to the axes. Also, the night after I wrote this entry, I went home and asked my 10 year old daughter the questions from the survey. She managed to get 9 out of 10 correct.

Posted by Jeff on Tuesday, Feb 23 | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

When I tell people from outside Texas what a bad board of education we have, I don't think they realize just how bad it is. They seem to think it's the general complaints about governments that everybody has. But the board of education down here really is horrible. I've blogged previously about the science standards (and again, and again), the language arts and reading standards, and the Chris Comer affair.

Now, there's a very good article in the NY Times Magazine describing their shenanigans in regards to the new social studies standards. I highly recommend this article. Here are a few highlights to wet your appetite.

Don McLeroy, a small, vigorous man with a shiny pate and bristling mustache, proposed amendment after amendment on social issues to the document that teams of professional educators had drawn up over 12 months, in what would have to be described as a single-handed display of archconservative political strong-arming.

...some activists decided that the time was right to try to reshape the history that children in public schools study. Succeeding at this would help them toward their ultimate goal of reshaping American society. As Cynthia Dunbar, another Christian activist on the Texas board, put it, “The philosophy of the classroom in one generation will be the philosophy of the government in the next."

McLeroy makes no bones about the fact that his professional qualifications have nothing to do with education. “I’m a dentist, not a historian,” he said. “But I’m fascinated by history, so I’ve read a lot.”

I'm not a doctor, but I stayed at a Holiday Inn last night.

McLeroy remains unbowed and talked cheerfully to me about how, confronted with a statement supporting the validity of evolution that was signed by 800 scientists, he had proudly been able to “stand up to the experts.”

Merely weaving important religious trends and events into the narrative of American history is not what the Christian bloc on the Texas board has pushed for in revising its guidelines. Many of the points that have been incorporated into the guidelines or that have been advanced by board members and their expert advisers slant toward portraying America as having a divinely preordained mission.

when Steven K. Green, director of the Center for Religion, Law and Democracy at Willamette University in Salem, Ore., testified at the board meeting last month in opposition to the board’s approach to bringing religion into history, warning that the Supreme Court has forbidden public schools from “seeking to impress upon students the importance of particular religious values through the curriculum,” and in the process said that the founders “did not draw on Mosaic law, as is mentioned in the standards,” several of the board members seemed dumbstruck.

One recurring theme during the process of revising the social-studies guidelines was the desire of the board to stress the concept of American exceptionalism, and the Christian bloc has repeatedly emphasized that Christianity should be portrayed as the driving force behind what makes America great.

Besides the fact that incorporation by reference [trying to tie the Constitution to the Declaration of Independence] is usually used for technical purposes rather than for such grandiose purposes as the reinterpretation of foundational texts, there is an oddity to this tactic. “The founders deliberately left the word ‘God’ out of the Constitution — but not because they were a bunch of atheists and deists,” says Susan Jacoby, author of “Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism.” “To them, mixing religion and government meant trouble.” The curious thing is that in trying to bring God into the Constitution, the activists — who say their goal is to follow the original intent of the founders — are ignoring the fact that the founders explicitly avoided religious language in that document.

What is wrong with the Texas process, according to many observers, is illustrated by the fate of Bill Martin Jr. The board has the power to accept, reject or rewrite the TEKS, and over the past few years, in language arts, science and now social studies, the members have done all of the above. Yet few of these elected overseers are trained in the fields they are reviewing.

To give an illustration simultaneously of the power of ideology and Texas’ influence, Barber told me that when he led the social-studies division at Prentice Hall, one conservative member of the board told him that the 12th-grade book, “Magruder’s American Government,” would not be approved because it repeatedly referred to the U.S. Constitution as a “living” document. “That book is probably the most famous textbook in American history,” Barber says. “It’s been around since World War I, is updated every year and it had invented the term ‘living Constitution,’ which has been there since the 1950s. But the social conservatives didn’t like its sense of flexibility. They insisted at the last minute that the wording change to ‘enduring.’ ” Prentice Hall agreed to the change, and ever since the book — which Barber estimates controlled 60 or 65 percent of the market nationally — calls it the “enduring Constitution.”

Those quotes are only a taste of the article. Go read the whole thing.

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Feb 19 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Note: I'd originally posted a lot of this information in a comment on Pharyngula, but I figured it was worth a blog entry, so I worked on it a bit and posted it here.

I've been hearing a lot recently that creationism is a fairly modern American movement, and that Christians were more nuanced in their understanding of scripture before that. For example, there was a recent entry on Pharyngula, summarizing a lecture by Ron Numbers, describing how creationism is really the product of Ellen White, the founder of Seventh Day Adventism. I've also heard Richard Dawkins make the claim a few times that young earth creationism is something new. There are certainly quite a few Christians today who interpret Genesis figuratively or allegorically, and quite a few of those who argue that it's obvious that Genesis isn't meant to be interpreted literally.

But how true are those claims? I went to the first place that all of us lazy researchers go - Wikipedia. Granted, I'm aware with the problems of trying to use Wikipedia as a primary source, but it's usually pretty useful.

The Wikipedia article lists examples of Christian creationism going all the way back to the beginning of Christianity (as well as numerous flavors of creationism of other religions predating Christianity). Even Saint Augustine, so often quoted for telling Christians not to speak about natural phenomena of which they were ignorant, thought that pretty much all of Genesis except for the creation story was literal, and seemed to think that the Earth was still only a few thousand years old.

They are deceived . . . by those highly mendacious documents which profess to give the history of many thousand years, though reckoning by the sacred writings, we find that not 6,000 years have yet passed. (City of God)

Sure, there were people that thought the Earth was much older, but young earth creationism doesn't appear to be a particularly new phenomenon.

I think that when people talk about creationism being a modern phenomenon, they're actually referring to a modern resurgence. By the 1800s, geologists were starting to learn enough about the history of our planet that it was pretty obvious that it was very ancient. They didn't have the techniques to pin down the age as well as we do now, but their estimates ranged from millions to billions of years. For anyone who studied the evidence, it was no longer possible to be intellectually honest and still maintain a young earth perspective. So, educated Christians who hadn't already done so switched to non-literal interpretations of Genesis. Day age and gap theories were among the popular interpretations.

It was in response to this 'liberalizing' of Christianity, as well as in response to the Enlightenment, that fundamentalist Christianity sprang up. And it was against this backdrop that young earth creationism had its resurgence, including the visions of Ellen White.

I think another point that's worth bringing up is the difference between what educated and uneducated people believe. I don't mean for this to sound condescending - merely factual. As I bring up over and over on this site, just look at the Science and Engineering Indicators put out by the National Science Foundation. One in four people in this country don't realize the Earth orbits the Sun (it's even worse in Europe), and one half don't realize that electrons are smaller than atoms. Of course, practically anybody with a good education knows those simple facts. But, consider what future historians would think about our society's understanding of those facts. If it wasn't for polls like those, all they would have to go on would be books, articles, and other written records. And it's mainly people with good educations who leave those records. Outside of polls and similar research, written records are biased towards the educated. Now, considering young earth creationism, I think there might be a similar bias going on when we try to figure out what people believed in the 1800s and even earlier. What gets recorded in books written by educated priests is not the same thing as what was believed by the uneducated population.

So, it seems a bit misleading to claim that young earth creationism is a modern phenomenon. You could get away with talking of a modern resurgence, but young earth creationism appears to be as old as religion itself. And to claim that Genesis is clearly figurative or allegorical seems a bit of a stretch, as well, considering how many intelligent people accepted it as literal before we knew enough about the history of our planet to know otherwise. It's tough to know what people were thinking thousands of years ago concerning the creation stories now recorded in Genesis, but it certainly seems possible that they were accepted at face value.

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Jan 22 | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I got another e-mail forwarded to me to research that hasn't yet been covered by Snopes. There is an official statement from one of the parties implicated in the e-mail, but the misleading nature of the e-mail makes people less likely to actually go to that organization.

The e-mail is about Obama's reaction to the recent shootings at Ft. Hood. It claims that Nidal Hassan was an advisor to Obama on homeland security, and that Obama has been quiet in his response to the shootings for this reason. As evidence, the e-mail provides a link to notes from a meeting that lists Hassan as a participant.

For the most part, this e-mail is false or misleading.

The link provided goes to the George Washington University Homeland Security Policy Institute (HSPI), not the federal government's Department of Homeland Security. The HSPI describes itself as follows.

Founded in 2003, The George Washington University Homeland Security Policy Institute (HSPI) is a nonpartisan “think and do” tank whose mission is to build bridges between theory and practice to advance homeland security through an interdisciplinary approach. By convening domestic and international policymakers and practitioners at all levels of government, the private and non-profit sectors, and academia, HSPI creates innovative strategies and solutions to current and future threats to the nation.

Nidal Hasan is listed in the pdf link, and this is the same Nidal Hasan responsible for killing the people at Fort Hood. However, he is listed as a participant, or in other words, an audience member. The presenters are listed earlier in the pdf, and Hasan is not among them. The HSPI has released a statement on Hasan's connection to the institute (currently available on their homepage). Here is the first paragraph of that statement.

In his capacity as Disaster & Preventive Psychiatry Fellow at the Uniformed Services University School of Medicine, Nidal Hasan registered ("RSVP'd') to attend as an audience member a number of Homeland Security Policy Institute (HSPI) events in the period June 2008 to February 2009. All of these events were open to the public. At no time has Nidal Hasan been affiliated with HSPI or The George Washington University.

So, Hasan was an audience member, or at least RSVP'd, for a meeting on homeland security organized by a university think tank. I think it's disingenuous to try to use that to try to show that Hasan was connected somehow with the president (other than the fact that as commander in chief, Obama was Hasan's boss, though removed by many levels of supervisors).

The full text of the e-mail forward is available below the fold.

Continue reading "E-mail Forward - Obama's Reaction to Ft. Hood Shootings" »

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Nov 20 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Wow. Just, wow. I know I've talked about Ray Comfort more times on this blog than is healthy (for example - here, here, here, here, here, and here), but now, not just is he publishing his drivel on his own, making scam websites, or getting followers to put the equivalent of junk mail into books at the book store. Now, he's been published in a blog on the U.S. News and World Report website, and boy is it ignorant.

The background of this article is this. Ray Comfort is publishing two versions of a reprint of Darwin's Origin of Species, along with an introduction in each version. The first version was abridged, and the introduction was made publicly available on the web. After the negative publicity it received, Comfort made his second version unabridged, and supposedly with a modified introduction. To give an idea of the introduction, here's how Comfort himself described it (be forewarned - there are many falsehoods and examples of bad logic in just these two paragraphs*).

This introduction gives the history of evolution, a timeline of Darwin's life, Hitler's undeniable connections to the theory, Darwin's racism, his disdain for women, and his thoughts on the existence of God. It lists the theory's many hoaxes, exposes the unscientific belief that nothing created everything, points to the incredible structure of DNA, and the absence of any species-to-species transitional forms.

It presents a balanced view of Creationism with information on scientists who believed that God created the universe—scientists such as Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton, Nicholas Copernicus, Francis Bacon, Michael Faraday, Louis Pasteur and Johannes Kepler. It uses many original graphics and "is for use in schools, colleges, and prestigious learning institutions." The introduction also contains the entire contents of the popular booklet, "Why Christianity?"

Towards the end of September, Dan Gilgoff posted an entry in his God & Country blog on U.S. News & World Report describing Comfort's book (the first version). After all the feedback Gilgoff got for that entry, he decided to revisit the issue. He set up an online debate between Ray Comfort and Eugenie Scott, the executive director of the National Center for Science Education. The debate consisted of four posts in total - Comfort's original argument, Scott's original argument, Comfort's response to Scott, and finally, Scott's response to Comfort.

I guess there are several ways I could have addressed this in a blog post, but I've decided to focus on Comfort's second post. That one struck me as so out and out ignorant, that it seemed a ripe target. I encourage you to read Scott's response first, but I thought I could supplement what she already wrote.

Continue reading "Ray Comfort - Still Ignorant on Evolution" »

Posted by Jeff on Thursday, Nov 5 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

There's a minor brouhaha over Nicholas Wade's review of Richard Dawkins's latest book, "The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution". Wade claimed that Dawkins had confused fact and theory, which prompted quite a few letters to the editor explaining Wade's mistake.

Now, I don't often get involved in discussions in the comments sections on websites, but I did leave a couple comments on this one. Rather than give a long introduction, I'll jump right to quoting the relevant comments from the article. Here is the original comment that prompted me to reply.

These people who keep arguing that evolution is a fact because there is so much supporting evidence for it are very funny. Evolution is a fact only if you can directly observe it happening. Otherwise, it is not a fact and will never be a fact. What is a fact is the evolutionists religious zealotry… ;)

— island

I responded thusly.

Island wrote: "Evolution is a fact only if you can directly observe it happening."

Aside from the observed instances of evolution (Lenski's e. coli experiments are a popular recent example), this statement seems to imply that nothing from history can be a fact, since events that happened in the past can no longer be directly observed. I don't think that's the way most people use the word, since, for example, I think most people would call it a 'fact' that the U.S. Civil War occurred, or that Abraham Lincoln was the 16th president of the U.S. There are other forms of evidence besides direct observation.

— Fatboy

Island responded to my comment as follows (this is the comment that made it worth reposting this whole exchange).

The civil war may be a fact, but you can't *know* this beyond any shadow of a doubt. You can know it beyond any *reasonable* doubt, however, so we can have an extremely high degree of certainty that it happened, but that is not the same thing. We can confidently assume that humans evolved from apes, because there is much supporting historical evidence in support of this assumption, but it will always be an assumption, and will never be a knowable truth…. or a fact.

— island

I responded again.

Island,

You're playing semantic games. You say it's not a fact that the Civil War occurred. Your definition of 'fact' is different from everybody I know personally, but at least now it's clear why you argue that evolution isn't a fact.

However, if something has to be proven 'beyond any shadow of a doubt' to be a fact, and the Civil War doesn't meet that criteria for you, I'm curious if there's anything that you would consider a fact. After all, one can always fall back on solipsism or Last Thursdayism to cast doubt on just about everything.

-Fatboy

Island did follow up with a long comment, and a link.

Fatboy, you miss the point that the scientific method is not “solipsism” and there can be no room for slopiness in this because theories are **always** subject to a better theory as defined by efficiency, or accuracy in conjunction with Occam.

As I stated, “degrees of certainty” (or our confidence level), increases with the strength of evidence, and I don't expect evolutionary theory to be radically overturned because of this, but it is a fact that a better theory will always be possible that approximates the historic record more accurately or with equal accuracy, but in less steps than Evolutionary theory does.

In this case, “evolution” didn't necessarily occur via the criterion that define our current understanding of the process, and the author might choose not to incorporate the term into this theory. In which case, “evolution” never was a fact.

Like I said, I don't expect it, but there is no room for play or you are not representing science like you claim to be, which is the point where the lies embellishments and distortions of this politics hurt science.

My personal beef is the way that this ideological mentality predetermines the assumptions about impetus behind some of the less-well defined mechanisms of evolutionary theory that are automatically taken to be of random or accidental nature, rather than of necessity or natural law, because evolutionists wrongly perceive such an admission in favor of the creationists position.

Which, unfortunately, justifies the pressure of the “other side” in order to counterbalance the dogma of the left.

And those are observable facts… ;)

— island

This is an excellent example of what I am talking about:

http://knol.google.com/k/richard-ryals/the-anthropic-principle/1cb34nnchgkl5/2#

— island

I responded one last time.

Island,

I was all ready to go with another long explanation of 'facts' and levels of certainty, but decided against arguing over semantics. If, as you already stated, your definition of 'fact' precludes including the occurrence of the U.S. Civil war in that definition, you're clearly using a definition well outside the standard usage. If 'fact' is to have any meaning at all, it must surely mean 'very high level of certainty', and not 'absolute 100% certainty'.

When you wrote, "theories are **always** subject to a better theory as defined by efficiency, or accuracy in conjunction with Occam," you're pedantically correct, but really stretching the point. Larry Woolf's quote of Gould above explains this point better than anything I could write, so there's no need for me to dwell on it.

To steer this back to the topic of the article, it seems that you may also be missing the point of what Dawkins wrote originally. Descent with modification occurred. We can be as sure of that as we can of the existence of the Roman Empire, the occurrence of the Civil War, Armstrong and Aldrin landing on the Moon, or the idea that the Earth orbits the Sun, whether you're willing to call those things facts or only grant them high levels of certainty. That's not being disingenuous. There really is that much evidence supporting common descent.

Now, there's the separate issue of what drives that evolution, the 'mechanisms' as you put it. That's where the theory comes into play, and is also where more of the uncertainty is, concerning natural selection, sexual selection, group selection, or genetic drift, to name just a few. We still know that those things occur, because they have been observed, too (except group selection - it's still questionable). However, there is a question as to how important each has been to the history of life on this planet.

— Fatboy

For reference, the Gould quote was this.

Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts do not go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's, but apples did not suspend themselves in midair pending the outcome. And humans evolved from apelike ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other, yet to be discovered.

As another aside, I know I didn't address the link that island provided, but I think Douglas Adams already covered the anthropic principle quite well. (I've also seen an even less reverant refutation of the anthropic principle.)

This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in - an interesting hole I find myself in - fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it's still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise.

If island responds again, I'll include the response here. However, I'm not sure if I'll leave any more comments on the NY Times site. There's an old saying about arguing with fools, and when someone resorts to saying that the historicity of the Civil War is something we can't be sure about, they may not be the type of people you want to be seen arguing with.

(There's always the chance that perhaps I'm a victim of Poe's Law. Island did, after all, leave a winking smiley in two comments. However, I get the feeling that island is being serious.)

Posted by Jeff on Monday, Oct 26 | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

This is something I've written about before (and has been written about by others), but it really struck me last night, so I felt like commenting on it today.

Last night, my daughter had her girl scout award ceremony. As is pretty common for these things, her troop meets at a church. The room where we had the ceremony is also a meeting room for one of the Sunday school classes, and one of the walls had a section for "Prayer Requests," where students put up little notes with things they'd like the congregation to pray for*.

One of the girl scouts, I'm assuming one who hasn't been exposed to church too much, asked what the "Prayer Requests" wall was about. The troop leader explained it to her, but I had a thought that made me smirk a bit, and bite my tongue not to say out loud - because God wouldn't know those people were having problems unless he heard about it through prayer.

When you stop and think about it, if you believe that your god is all knowing and all powerful, then intercessory prayer really is a weird thing. Sure, it makes sense if you believe in imperfect or fickle gods, who may or may not follow the daily events of our personal lives, and who may or may not care what happens to us. But that's not the type of god most Christians believe in.

Most Christians I know believe that Yahweh is omnipotent, omniscient, and that he has a perfect plan for us. If that's the case, what could you expect to achieve through prayer? Yahweh already knows what's going on - he doesn't need earthly informants. It's not as if it's a popularity contest, and Yahweh's going to count votes to determine his divine intervention. And it really is less than humble to ask the almighty to change his divine plan simply because you don't like it. The plan is supposedly perfect, after all.

I can understand other types of prayer - praise, thanksgiving, asking for strength for yourself. But when it comes to intercessory prayer, it seems a bit, well, odd.

Anyway, these aren't terribly original thoughts. But, the more and more I've been outside of Christianity, the stranger and stranger some of those old habits seem.

*I don't mean to belittle the actual topics of most of the prayer requests. There were definitely some serious issues on that wall.

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Oct 23 | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

I received an e-mail forward the other day, which contained a PowerPoint presentation giving the supposed origin of Arabic numerals. It claimed that when each number is written with only straight lines, the number of angles created is the same as the quantity being represented. The text accompanying the presentation made the additional claim that these numerals have remained unchanged for thousands of years.

That explanation is completely false. I won't go into detail on the origins of the numerals in this entry since there are already sources that cover this. There are several Wikipedia articles that overlap on this subject. The first one below is probably best for the history of the symbols. The second one has some good general information. The third one has a good picture of the first known use of Arabic numerals in Europe.

Hindu-Arabic Numeral System
Arabic Numerals
History of the Hindu-Arabic Numeral System

The unique feature of our numbering system, having each position represent a power of 10 (as opposed to a system like Roman numerals), developed some time between the first and sixth centuries. Most of the symbols in that early system came from Brahmi numerals (which themselves came from earlier sources), but a few seem to have come from other sources, such as Buddhist inscriptions. The symbol for zero is an exception, having been invented around the same time as the decimal numbering system. There's some question to how those Brahmi symbols were developed and what they originally represented, but it certainly wasn't for counting angles. One, two, and three are pretty easy, since, like Roman Numerals, they were simply one, two, or three lines (even in Arabic numerals, one, two, and three all seem to have been originally related to simple counting - follow those links). The other symbols may have come from their alphabet.

At any rate, the symbols have evolved quite a bit over the centuries, going down different paths in the different regions where they've been used. I've borrowed one of the images from Wikipedia and posted it below, a table compiled in 1757 showing various usages of numerals in European history (go to Wikipedia for a higher resolution image). Not only would we have a hard time reading the numbers from other regions of the world today, we'd have a hard time reading some of the earliest European uses.

Continue reading "Origin of Arabic Numerals - Was It Really for Counting Angles?" »

Posted by Jeff on Monday, Oct 19 | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (0)

I received an e-mail forward recently. It was a story supposedly written by an airline passenger who got seated next to some soldiers who were on their way to receive special training in preparation for being deployed to Afghanistan. The airline was selling $5 sack lunches; the soldiers didn't have the money to spend; so the author bought them all lunches. Once crew and passengers learned what the author had done, there were some accolades, and a few donations totalling $75 in cash, which the author gave to the soldiers at the end of the flight. If you want to read the full thing, it's available on Snopes.

Nothing too special, right? It seems pretty typical for an e-mail forward - lots of non-specific information along with a moral lesson. Heck, it may even be true (though if I was a betting man, considering the reliability of e-mail forwards, I'd wager not). So why is it worth a blog entry?

There was a preface on the particular version of the e-mail that I received that actually made me chuckle out loud.

The liberal snopes.com cannot confirm this, so it is a good bet that it is valid for the most part. A beautiful story.

You just can't help but wonder what type of mindset it takes to write something like that. To begin with, the person was accusing Snopes of being too liberal. To be honest, I have seen this claim before, but it only holds up if Stephen Colbert was right, if reality really does have a liberal bias. Because honestly, the main thing that Barbara and David Mikkelson do is debunk urban legends, particularly those that get passed around in e-mails. It may be the case that Snopes debunks more conservative myths than liberal myths, but I'd be willing to bet that it's because there are far more erroneous e-mail forwards coming from the right for them to debunk. Besides, this particular story is about being nice to individual members of the military. I'd hardly consider that partisan. Or is the author implying that just being 'liberal' makes a source less trustworthy?

And then there's the main claim, that because Snopes doesn't confirm the story, that it's probably true. This just doesn't make sense at all. If the author were implying that the Mikkelsons are bad at doing research, there's still a lack of evidence. To make the claim that if a poor researcher can't find evidence, then the evidence probably exists, is a bit silly. I can claim that leprechauns exist, and I doubt the Mikkelsons would be able to find any evidence confirming the existence of leprechauns. Should I follow this author's lead and use this as confirmation that leprechauns are real? Or is the author so cynical as to think that the Mikkelson's lie about everything. If so, when should I be expecting my check from Microsoft?

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Oct 16 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

When I first became an atheist, it was of the sort that people call 'weak atheism', and some would even have referred to it as agnosticism. Now that I've had some time to become comfortable with the idea that there aren't any deities, I've moved from the position that a god is a possibility simply lacking in evidence, to the position that gods really are pretty unlikely, and almost surely don't exist.

In a particular essay I wrote shortly after becoming an atheist, I summarized my position on deities and souls as follows.

To clarify my position on religious matters at the time of writing this essay, I'm not absolutely one-hundred percent certain about anything. However, I'm about as sure that the Earth is a globe that orbits the Sun as I am that the Bible was written by people, and that a God as presented in the Bible doesn't exist. I'm not as certain that no type of divine being exists at all. I don't see an absolute reason why there would have to be one, but that doesn't mean that there isn't one, or that a super powerful being didn't come into existence after the universe did. I'm also open to the idea that we have souls and will experience some type of afterlife. So, I may not buy into the arguments of Christianity, anymore, but I haven't rejected a spiritual aspect of the universe, altogether.

That certainly sounds sensible. So what's changed?

To start off, maybe I should begin with discussing certainties. In a philosophical sense, we can't be 100% sure of anything. There's always some small finite chance that whatever we think we know is wrong. The common arm chair philosopher argument is to ask how we can be sure that everything we know isn't just a dream, or a hallucination. Practically speaking, however, some scenarios are just so unlikely that their probability becomes infinitesimally small. So, while we admit that in a philosophical sense they have some finite probability, we live our lives as if they're impossible. Noone goes to bed at night worried that gravity will quit working and that they'll wake up in space. So, when I wrote in the first paragraph that deities almost surely do not exist, it's only in that philosophical sense that I grant that they might.

Let me digress one more time before getting into the main point. Let me explain just why I was religious before I became an atheist. It really had very little to do with evidence, and very much to do with emotion and tradition. I'd been brought up going to church, and having authority figures tell me over and over how important it was to be religious, and how important it was to have faith. Even certain parts of the Bible stress how important it is to have faith without evidence (think the story of doubting Thomas - John 20:29, or Jesus being tempted by Satan and replying that you shouldn't put God to the test - Matthew 4:7). I think the following comment I made on a blog during a discussion when I was still Christian shows just how much I valued faith over evidence.

I don't think it's a sign of personal weakness to believe in God. Knowing all that I know about science, it takes a lot of faith to accept the Bible. To me, that's more of a strength than a weakness.

I knew all along that I didn't have much evidence to support my religious beliefs, but I didn't let it shake my faith. In fact, the only 'evidence' I had for the divine were a warm fuzzy feeling that I assumed to be God's presence, and a very minor miracle that I personally witnessed (an object I'd lost turned up in a place where I was positive I'd checked very thoroughly). I knew all along that both of those forms of evidence were very shaky, and could very easily be explained through non-supernatural causes. I counted them as evidence because I wanted to believe, not because I thought they were strong evidence.

The reason I brought all that up is to reinforce that there really is no strong evidence for the divine. I've covered this in much more depth in the essay I mentioned above, but even when my faith was strong and I had no reason to doubt any evidence supporting a deity, I just didn't see it.

When I first became an atheist, it was through a rational approach. I recognized how little evidence there was for gods, and realized I was a Christian mainly through accident of birth, and didn't have any real reason to choose it over any other religion, so I was left with atheism as the only honest choice. But those emotional reasons that kept me a Christian for so long were harder to shake than any logic. Remember, the type of god that most Christians believe in isn't the fire and brimstone version from the Old Testament, it's the 'God is love' version you learn in Sunday school. I didn't like to lose that eternal protector, and I wasn't ready yet to give up the promise of an afterlife, either. I didn't want to admit there was no chance of ever having those back, so that's why I clung to a god as still being a possibility, even though there wasn't any evidence.

Now, let's leave emotion behind. Even if Christianity wasn't the result of Yahweh intervening with his creation, it still had to come from somewhere. One interesting observation is that nearly every culture has a religion, nearly all of which include deities. It's pretty unlikely that religion has been invented out of thin air independently in each of those cultures. There are a few options that seem much more parsimonious - 1) that there actually is something to religion, and all these myths are attempts to explain some mysterious force in the universe (think the fable of the blind men and the elephant), 2) there's something about human nature that makes people keep inventing religion, 3) religion was present in the common ancestral group of all modern humans and has been passed down, being modified along the way (similar to language).

Another interesting observation is that, not just do many cultures have religion, but the deities in these separate religions serve similar, specific functions. For example, the Greek goddess Ganymede, the Norse god Thor, the Aztec god Tlaloc, the Egyptian God Tefnut, are all gods of rain. The cultures all believed that rain was explained by the existence of these gods. It's a similar case in other cultures, and for many different phenomena. This would seem to indicate that the first of the three options above isn't true. It's not some mysterious force that early religions described - it was unexplained natural phenomena. It seems probable that the reason all cultures have religion is down to the latter two reasons from above, and quite probably a combination of those two reasons. Curiosity is part of human nature, as is a tendency to imagine agency where there is none. This could have very easily led early humans to conjecture that supernatural forces were controlling aspects of the universe that they couldn't yet explain. As people spread across the world and religious traditions were passed down from generation to generation, the slight differences in isolated groups led to the various religions that we have today.

Judaism (and hence Christianity), being monotheistic, may seem a bit different than the polytheistic religions. However, it appears that early Judaism was henotheistic - in other words, that they believed in multiple gods, but worshipped only one. The earliest roots of Judaism appear to be from a prior Canaanite religion, with an entire pantheon of gods. Certainly, some passages in the Old Testament hint at these polytheistic origins (the use of 'we' in Genesis, the worship of other gods, etc.) And certain stories from Judaism are certainly from earlier cultures, such as Noah's flood being a rehashed version of the Mesopotamian Flood Myth. Many aspects of the Old Testament also read as just so stories explaining why the universe is the way it is - going back to what I mentioned above about religion explaining the unexplained natural phenomena.

It certainly seems that religion was invented by our ancient ancestors, not as a deliberate fabrication, but like I said, as an attempt to explain nature. The very concept of gods is part of that invention. That is very important, so let me repeat it - the very concept of gods is an invention of human mythology.

So, there are two key points from what I wrote above - there is no evidence for any gods, and the very concept of gods is a human invention. Given those two points, it seems almost certain that gods don't exist. It's a bit like unicorns, leprechauns, or fairies. Gods are just another set of mythical beings. We don't go around saying that gnomes are a remote possibility simply lacking in evidence - we rightly say that gnomes are products of our imaginations and never really existed. Why, when it comes to a different invention of human mythology, do so many people say that it's something we can never know for certain, or that deities are outside the realm of investigation, or that it takes faith to think they aren't real? These are things I would have said myself when I was still Christian, but now I recognize them for the double standard they are.

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Oct 2 | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

A few weeks ago, my wife attended a presentation by a local doctor and a local pharmacy on something called bio-identical hormone replacement therapy (BHRT). (If you've read this blog before, guess which pharmacy.) The presentation sounded mostly reasonable, but a few things that were said didn't sit quite right with my wife, so she asked me to use my Google skills to research it a bit for her. I'm not a doctor, but I have a healthy skepticism. And when professional organizations with the appropriate expertise express concerns over specific treatments, I become even more skeptical of claims of proponents of those treatments.

Before getting into everything that I found, here's the bottom line. Conventional hormone replacement therapy carries risks, but may be worth it for the patient. That's up for the patient and their doctor to decide. Bio-identical hormone replacement therapy doesn't appear to be significantly safer, if at all, compared to conventional hormone replacement therapy. After more trials and research, it may turn out that BHRT is slightly better than conventional HRT, but somebody needs to do the work to determine that, first. If someone's considering hormone replacement therapy, they shouldn't buy into claims that the bio-identical variety is safer, and shouldn't let those claims influence their decision on whether or not to use hormone replacement therapy.

My gut feel is that the people making the claims about BHRT are full of it. I've always been skeptical of the people who think 'natural' means safer (remember that cyanide and snake venom are natural, too), and that seems to be one of the main arguments for BHRT. The pamphlets promoting BHRT even had some statements about how pharmaceutical companies won't research BHRT because there's no profit in it, which of course set off my BS detectors, since it just rings of a conspiracy theory. Any doctors or pharmacies making unfounded claims about the benefits of BHRT are, in my opinion, being dishonest.

Anyway, I looked up a few sites to see what people had to say about BHRT and compounded BHRT. Here's what I found.

Continue reading "A Skeptical Look at Bio-Identical Hormone Replacement Therapy" »

Posted by Jeff on Tuesday, Sep 15 | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

As with most of my recent blog entries, this started as an e-mail response to a friend, and has been adapted for use here.

Looking to alternate viewpoints to get a balanced view of things is something we should all strive to do. If you only ever visit forums where everyone agrees with each other, those forums become echo chambers, and nobody ever examines their views. On the opposite end of the spectrum, though, just how do you determine who's worth listening to when there are so many voices and not all views are equally valid?

Strictly logically speaking, it makes no difference who's making an argument. It's the arguments themselves that need to be addressed to determine whether they're true or not. If you hang around the Internet long enough, you're bound to see people using the term ad hominem to criticize arguments against the messenger that ignore the message. Practically speaking, though, there's no way to read every point out there. In the age of the Internet, everybody with a computer can broadcast their opinions to the entire world. And with hundreds of channels on the satellite, even TV doesn't have the same respectability as it once did. At what point can you say that a certain source is no longer trustworthy, and no longer worth spending your time reading what they have to say? When the boy keeps crying wolf, at what point do you quit paying attention?

Are there any sources so outlandish you can just ignore them altogether? For example, in arguments over science curricula, I could point you to an organization that honestly and truly believes the world is flat. They've got quite a website with discussion forums to support their claim. But are they even worth taking a first look? It's very, very well documented that the world is roughly spherical. Can't we just call those people cranks without worrying about examining both sides of the flat earth issue?

A 'culture war' I've gotten more caught up in myself is evolution/geology/astronomy (and I guess you could throw physics in there too for radioactive decay & the speed of light) vs. creationism. I'd always accepted the science, but wondered if I might have been missing something when I first learned just how many people in this country doubted evolution and an ancient universe (this was around the time that Intelligent Design began making headlines a few years ago). So, I looked into the claims made by groups like Answers in Genesis, the Discovery Institute, the Institute for Creation Research, or individuals like Kent Hovind or Ray Comfort, and at the same time looked a little more into how science works and how we know what we know. The end result, as could probably be expected, is that the evidence for evolution and an ancient universe is overwhelming, and all those anti-science groups had used a lot of poor arguments (and even some dishonesty) to support their cause. But, they continue writing new essays and books, coming up with more arguments, and even making movies to support their claims. Am I still obligated to read what they have to say? Is it wrong to dismiss their new arguments out of hand because I've already seen how poorly they've performed in the past? Is it close minded to not want to waste any more of my time with them?

I guess what I'm getting at is the issue of credibility. Of course, we should always be skeptical of every source, never completely trust any single one, and always seek verification from other independent sources. Some sources are credible enough, however, that you can be pretty confident in the information from them until you see conflicting information from another source, while other sources are so lacking in credibility that you shouldn't accept anything from them until you've seen it elsewhere. Dictionaries and encyclopedias would fall into the former category. They're bound to have a few errors, but the entire editorial process guarantees that they're pretty darned accurate. E-mail forwards and tabloids definitely fall into the latter category. Other sources fall some where in between, so we have to determine how much trust we have in those sources.

Credibility isn't just about honesty. I'm sure the flat earthers I mentioned above are sincere in their claims and don't think they're lying. But they're still completely wrong, none the less. So, credibility has as much to do with competence as it does with sincerity.

One of the things that I'm really big on is science. I think it's the best method we have for answering questions that have objective answers, or in other words, the best method we have for determining reality. Some questions are beyond science. For example, gun control comes down to a question of personal freedom vs. societal safety. It's a question of how much value we place on those two aspects. Science can't give us those values. It can certainly provide statistics, telling us how many people a year are killed by guns or comparing safety in nations with gun control laws to those without. So, we can use science to help inform our opinion, but we can't use it to make the final decisions on legislation.

Most people don't understand science very well, but for most of those people, you just have to let it slide or you'd be arguing all the time, and I'd rather just enjoy their company (as I've pointed out before, 1 in 4 Americans thinks the Sun goes around the Earth, and over half don't realize electrons are smaller than atoms). But, once people are in a position of public prominence, where their voice is heard by a large number of people, they have a responsibility to make sure their voice is accurate. And that means either having a very good grip on science themselves, or, less preferably, knowing where to go to get the results from science.

This is especially true for politicians. They make the laws that affect all of us, so they need to make sure that their laws are based in reality. And they deal with a large range of issues, so they need to know how to determine the best sources even when the issue is outside their immediate field of expertise. When politicians get the science wrong, it really makes me question their credibility. It means either that they're ignorant, or that they're willing to put their ideology ahead of the evidence (or, hopefully much less common, that they're willing to lie to pander to their constituents).

One of the most obvious examples of this is global warming. The evidence for global warming is very strong, and the vast majority of experts in the relevant fields are confident in the science. When I see politicians or other public figures claim that global warming isn't happening, or saying that the science isn't all that certain, it makes me question everything else they say. Another example, not quite so prevalent yet, but getting bigger, is the anti-vaccination movement, or the whole alternative medicine movement in general. Medicine now is the best it's ever been in history, thanks almost entirely to evidence based practices and the double blind clinical trial. Vaccines have saved millions. People who are willing to ignore that put their lives at risk, and in the case of the anti-vaccination movement, put other's lives at risk because of reduced herd immunity. So, the global warming denialists, anti-vaccinationists, alternative medicine proponents, or anyone else who gets science egregiously wrong, also make me question everything else that they say, because it shows that they're too ignorant to understand the evidence or are willing to ignore that evidence when it suits their agenda.

Everything I've said so far has been pretty neutral on politics - just general statements. But I'll be honest - in the past decade or so since I've been more actively following politics, it seems that Republicans are worse off in the credibility department than Democrats (i.e. The Republican War on Science). It's certainly not an all or nothing dichotomy, as there are plenty of Democrats I wouldn't trust as far as I could throw, and plenty of crazy ideas seem to be more associated with the left (9/11 conspiracy theories, alternative medicine), but as the comedian Stephen Colbert often says, it seems that "Reality has a well known liberal bias." Maybe my perception is due to sampling bias because I receive far more erroneous e-mail forwards that support Republicans than those supporting Democrats. Maybe it's because the Republicans have been in power, so they've been critiqued a bit closer, and maybe I'll start to see more of it coming from the left now that they're in power. Maybe it was the Bush administration in particular that abused science, and it isn't such a general trait for all Republicans. Maybe the official platform of the Texas GOP isn't actually representative of most Texas Republicans or indicative of Republicans in other states. But you don't often hear of Democratic school board members introducing anti-evolution measures. And the amount of Republican politicians who refuse to make a simple comment on Obama's citizenship, or who fanned the flames of this death panel nonsense and spread other misinformation over the health care debate, doesn't help with their credibility, either.

I thought of not including that previous paragraph so that this entry would remain politically neutral, but that's honestly how I see it, and I figured that it would help others to see partly why I have the views I do. I realize that politicians from both sides of the aisle will lie to win votes, but my impression is that there's far more misinformation from the right side than the left. But, that's also why I appreciate the conservative e-mails that friends send me, and hope that they keep sending me. It keeps me from only seeing one side of things.

Anyway, I apologize for rambling a bit with this entry. Looking to alternate viewpoints to get a balanced view of things is a noble goal. The problem is that there's just not enough time to listen to everybody's point of view, so it becomes a challenge of figuring out who's credible enough to listen to in the first place.

Updated 2009-09-09 - Removed a section describing my own views on gun control, since it doesn't add at all to the theme of this entry.

Posted by Jeff on Tuesday, Sep 8 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, I got another e-mail that I couldn't help but respond to, and that I figured was worth publishing my response on this blog. I don't mean to makethis blog too political (there are a lot of other things I like much more than politics), but recycling e-mails is an easy way to come up with blog entries.

Anyway, like normal for these things, I've formatted the entry to put the original e-mail in blockquotes, followed by my responses (edited just a bit from the e-mail version). My responses are not meant to be a complete point by point refutation of the e-mail, but only cover the most outrageous statements.

Krauthammer's Views on President Barack Obama

Dr. Krauthammer is on Fox News. He is an M.D. and he is paralyzed from the neck down. Be forewarned on what is happening. A friend went to hear Charles Krauthammer. He listened with 25 others in closed room. What he says here, is NOT 2nd-hand, but 1st.

Last Monday was a profound evening, hearing Dr. Charles Krauthammer speak to the Center for the American Experiment. He is brilliant intellectual, seasoned and articulate. He is forthright and careful in his analysis, and never resorts to emotions or personal insults. He is NOT a fear monger nor an extremist in his comments and views. He is a fiscal conservative, and has a Pulitzer Prize for writing. He is a frequent contributor to Fox News and writes weekly for the Washington Post. The entire room was held spellbound during his talk. I have shared this with many of you and several have asked me to summarize his comments, as we are living in uncharted waters economically and internationally.

According to Krauthammer himself, this is not an accurate representation of his talk. Remember not to trust anything in an e-mail until you've seen independent confirmation somewhere else.
http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/krauthammer.asp

The authorship says nothing about the validity of the claims. However, realize that it means that these are just the thoughts of somebody with an e-mail account, not those of somebody with the credentials of Krauthammer.

1. Mr. Obama is a very intellectual, charming individual. He is not to be underestimated. He is a cool customer who doesn't show his emotions. It's very hard to know what's behind the mask. Taking down the Clinton dynasty from a political neophyte was an amazing accomplishment. The Clintons still do not understand what hit them. Obama was in the perfect place at the perfect time.

Nothing to refute, since it's just claiming that Obama is a good politician.

2. Obama has political skills comparable to Reagan and Clinton. He has a way of making you think he's on your side, agreeing with your position, while doing the opposite. Pay no attention to what he SAYS; rather, watch what he DOES!

Nothing to refute here, either. It's simply saying that, as with all politicians, pay attention to their actions, not their campaign promises.

3. Obama has a ruthless quest for power. He did not come to Washington to make something out of himself, but rather to change everything, including dismantling capitalism. He can’t be straightforward on his ambitions, as the public would not go along. He has a heavy hand, and wants to level the playing field with income redistribution and punishment to the achievers of society. He would like to model the USA to Great Britain or Canada .

Seems a bit hyperbolic, don't you think? A bit inconsistent, too, claiming Obama wants to dismantle capitalism, while at the same time claiming Obama wants to model the US after the UK and Canada, both of which are capitalist.

As far as leveling the playing field, yes Democrats do favor a bit more redistribution than Republicans. I tend to agree with some redistribution which I've already explained previously. I have to admit to benefiting from that redistribution myself, since I took advantage of government scholarships to help pay for my college (actually, I know very few people who went to college without some sort of financial aid from the government).

4. His three main goals are to control ENERGY, PUBLIC EDUCATION, AND NATIONAL HEALTH CARE by the Federal government. He doesn't care about the auto or financial services industries, but got them as an early bonus. The cap and trade will add costs to everything and stifle growth. Paying for FREE college education is his goal. Most scary is his healthcare program, because if you make it FREE and add 46,000,000 people to a Medicare-type single-payer system, the costs will go through the roof.. The only way to control costs is with massive RATIONING of services, like in Canada . God forbid.

As I've said many times, economics isn't my strong point. I'm sure a carbon cap and trade system will raise prices somewhat, but how else do we pay for the development of technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions? Even if Krauthammer or the author of this e-mail have a different proposal than a cap and trade system, the money for that development has to come from somewhere, which ultimately means from us, either in higher taxes or higher prices on goods.

Is a free college education really that bad of a thing? Does the author think higher education should be reserved only for those that can afford it?

As far as health care, I'm getting a bit sick of hearing people only refer to Canada or the UK when complaining about universal health care (and stretching the truth when referring to those two countries, as well). Why doesn't anyone ever talk of the Netherlands, France, or Spain? On this blog, I've already referred previously to a good article comparing health care in the U.S. to the rest of the industrialized world. Here it is again.
http://scienceblogs.com/denialism/2009/05/are_patients_in_universal_heal.php

Here's another link, this one from the World Health Organization. In 2000, it ranked the U.S. health care system 37th in the world.
http://www.who.int/whr/2000/media_centre/press_release/en/index.html

As far as the rationing comment, the only way to control costs of any health care system with finite resources is through some sort of rationing, which is currently being done in the U.S. primarily by the private insurance companies. In the real world, where we don't have unlimited money to spend, some amount of rationing has to be done, no matter how much we may dislike it.

I've written a bit more on the health care issue here.

5. He has surrounded himself with mostly far-left academic types. No one around him has ever even run a candy store. But they are going to try and run the auto, financial, banking and other industries. This obviously can’t work in the long run. Obama is not a socialist; rather he's a far-left secular progressive bent on nothing short of revolution. He ran as a moderate, but will govern from the hard left. Again, watch what he does, not what he says.

This author really thinks Obama has surrounded himself with the far left? The main complaint I've seen on more liberal sites is that Obama is too far right. He's made a point to include many moderates and even Republicans in his appointments.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1208/16734.html

I think the words that this author used perjoratively are interesting. For example, 'far left academic types'. Is he implying that educated and liberal are the same thing? Does he have a problem specifically with educated people? The other interesting term was 'secular progressive'. What's wrong with secular politicians? We have a secular government. Most activities we perform are secular. Does this author want a theocracy?

And what's with the hyperbole with 'revolution'?

6. Obama doesn’t really see himself as President of the United States , but more as a ruler over the world. He sees himself above it all, trying to orchestrate and coordinate various countries and their agendas. He sees moral equivalency in all cultures. His apology tour in Germany and England was a prime example of how he sees America , as an imperialist nation that has been arrogant, rather than a great noble nation that has at times made errors. This is the first President ever who has chastised our allies and appeased our enemies!

This isn't even consistent. Obama supposedly sees himself as ruler of the world, yet travels the world apologizing for our mistakes? And why do people consider it unpatriotic to own up to mistakes?

7. He is now handing out goodies. He hopes that the bill (and pain) will not come due until after he is re-elected in 2012. He would like to blame all problems on Bush from the past, and hopefully his successor in the future. He has a huge ego, and Mr. Krauthammer believes he is a narcissist.

Not enough of substance here to refute.

8. Republicans are in the wilderness for a while, but will emerge strong. We're pining for another Reagan, but there will never be another like him. Krauthammer believes Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty and Bobby Jindahl (except for his terrible speech in February) are the future of the party. Newt Gingrich is brilliant, but has baggage. Sarah Palin is sincere and intelligent, but needs to really be seriously boning up on facts and info if she is to be a serious candidate in the future. We need to return to the party of lower taxes, smaller government, personal responsibility, strong national defense, and state’s rights.

Not really much to comment on here, since it's a statement of subjective preferences. The only thing is that I would prefer to see 'fiscal responsibility' rather than 'lower taxes.' When the government has to increase spending, the only responsible thing to do is pay for it. And I'll skip commenting on the quality of those particular people (except 'death panel', 'global warming isn't real' Palin - I still can't believe she was a candidate for VP).

9. The current level of spending is irresponsible and outrageous. We are spending trillions that we don’t have. This could lead to hyper-inflation, depression or worse. No country has ever spent themselves into prosperity. The media is giving Obama, Reid and Pelosi a pass because they love their agenda. But eventually the bill will come due and people will realize the huge bail outs didn’t work, nor will the stimulus package.

These were trillion-dollar payoffs to Obama’s allies, unions and the Congress to placate the left, so he can get support for #4 above.

I know this e-mail is about Obama, but how can Republicans claim the high ground on fiscal responsibility? With Reagan and Bush senior, the national deficit increased. We had a brief respite and a budget surplus under Clinton. Then, after 6 years of Republican controlled House, Senate, and executive, we had huge deficits. Yes, we were fighting a war under Bush Jr., but how can you justify lowering taxes when you know there's going to be increased spending?
http://crooksandliars.com/jon-perr/obamas-summit-and-myth-republican-fiscal

As far as the recession, the current consensus among economists is that it seems to be getting better. I realize people will argue over the cause until the cows come home, but I think a fair case can be made for the government's intervention actually helping. At any rate, if the consensus is correct, it certainly puts to rest the claims that the current policies are only going to make matters worse.
http://blogs.reuters.com/macroscope/2009/08/10/us-recessions-ending-now-what/

10. The election was over in mid-September when Lehman brothers failed, fear and panic swept in, we had an unpopular President, and the war was grinding on indefinitely without a clear outcome. The people are in pain, and the mantra of change caused people to act emotionally. Any Dem would have won this election; it was surprising it was as close as it was.

I agree that the war and the economic crisis pretty much did guarantee that the Democrats would win the presidential election. But this author's surpised it was so close? Obama had the largest percentage of the popular vote in decades - the largest by the non-incumbent party since FDR.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presidential_elections_by_popular_vote_margin

11. In 2012, if the unemployment rate is over 10%, Republicans will be swept back into power. If it's under 8%, the Dems continue to roll. If it's between 8-10%, it will be a dogfight. It will all be about the economy. I hope this gets you really thinking about what's happening in Washington and Congress. There is a left-wing revolution going on, according to Krauthammer, and he encourages us to keep the faith and join the loyal resistance. The work will be hard, but we're right on most issues and can reclaim our country, before it's far too late.

Well, we'll just have to wait and see what happens in 3 years.

Anyway, I apologize for the recent glut of politcal entries, but I have to confess that I have a few more in the works right now. I probably wouldn't write so many, though, if politics wasn't so full of people claiming things that weren't true. Hopefully I can get this all out of my system and get back to writing about less controversial topics, like evolution and religion.

Posted by Jeff on Wednesday, Sep 2 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've added a new pamphlet to my Religious Essays section, A Brief Introduction to Non-Belief. I can be a bit long winded, and although I like all of the points I made in the main essays, I realized that their length might discourage people from reading them. This new pamphlet covers the most common question and misconceptions I encounter when people first learn I'm an atheist. It's short enough that it fits onto a single 8.5" x 11" sheet of paper (as long as you print on both sides). I also corrected numerous typos from the other essays while I was at it.

Posted by Jeff on Wednesday, Aug 19 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Universal health care has been a hot topic for debate for a while now, but has just recently begun making big headlines with the new proposed health care plan by the Obama administration. I've never really had a huge respect for the knowledge of our country's population (e.g. 1 in 4 Americans think the Sun goes around the Earth), but some of the statements I see coming from the right wing on this are just mind numbingly ignorant - or extremly dishonest.

I've briefly mentioned universal healthcare in a previous entry. Here's what I had to say back then:

If May was referring to something other than the stimulus packages, the policy I've personally heard referred to as socialism the most often is universal health care. I don't understand why everyone is so against it. Compared to industrialized nations with universal health care, the U.S. spends about twice the amount on health care (from either a per capita or GDP basis), but our quality of care isn't any better and we have less access to physicians (http://scienceblogs.com/denialism/2009/05/are_patients_in_universal_heal.php)

Now, if you follow the link from the above quote, you'll find data comparing the health care systems of various prosperous democracies (mostly Australia, Canada, Germany, The Netherlands, New Zealand, The UK, and The USA, with a bit of data for other countries). Note that the U.S. is the only one of those countries without universal health care. What the data show is that, in addition to what was already stated above about the U.S. spending far more per capita (around double) than the other countries in the comparison, that in most measures of quality of health care, the U.S. does worse than almost all the other countries, with the exceptions being Canada and the UK for certain issues.

Now, I was getting pretty used to conservatives simply pointing to Canada and the UK as examples of why universal healthcare was a bad idea. And I'd point out that there are other types of universal health care plans out there, and that we don't need to emulate the worst examples. But it seems that recently, even just pointing to the two worst plans wasn't enough, and now I'm starting to hear just out and out falsehoods about healthcare in the UK and Canada, and falsehoods about the president's new plan.

There's a decent article in the Guardian about some of the claims coming out about the UK's health care system. As I said already, given how poor the UK system is compared to other universal health care systems, you'd think conservatives would just stick to cherry picking data, and wonder why they would resort to lying about the UK's system.

Probably the most famous example of misrepresenting Obama's plan is the whole 'death panel' fiasco. Palin made headlines on that, and now other conservative leaders, such as Gingrich, have even backed up her statements. And it's not as if I chose two radical fringe elements to be easy targets - one was the vice presidential candidate, and the other was the Speaker of the House. (At least other Republicans, like Senator Murkowski and Senator Isakson have tried to set the record straight.) You've got to wonder about what these people are thinking. Are they really that ignorant? Are they lying because they'll do anything to keep from having socialized medicine in any form? Is it simply to appease their base? Whatever the reason, it boggles the mind that they can state such blatant untruths, and still have a sizeable portion of Americans support them.

When it comes to universal health care, I do support it, but in a rather guarded way. Looking at that link I provided earlier about health care in other countries, it's clear that universal health care can be either a boon or a bane, depending on how it's implemented. It's neither a guaranteed utopia, nor a guaranteed descent into becoming a new USSR. Considering our government's track record with big programs (they've done good with things like NASA and the FDA, but not so good with things like the TSA), this is something that needs to be watched closely.

Universal health care also makes sense considering the system that we already have in place. I've already written my thoughts on this in a comment on The New Minority blog, which I'll paraphrase here.

One issue is that we already do have a de facto national health care system. Publicly funded hospitals cannot turn away anyone for a life threatening emergency. And honestly, I like that. I don't want to show up at a hospital bleeding out, and have to wait on some clerk to clear my insurance before the surgeons fix me up. And I don't want paramedics to be the ones making decisions on whether or not I get treated when the ambulance shows up.

Accepting that means that insured and non-insured alike get treated, and some of the treatments are too expensive to ever be paid off by the people that received them (even if you garnished 100% of their wages for the rest of their lives, as I've heard some people suggest). So, the bills for those treatments get footed by the rest of us, through raised insurance premiums and higher taxes.

Now, consider that some of those emergencies, like heart attacks or strokes, could be avoided through preventative treatment, which in many cases are cheaper to implement than the emergency care. So, if you accept that hospitals are going to provide emergency treatment to everybody, the question becomes, is it cheaper to provide everybody with ongoing healthcare to avoid those emergencies, or to just stick to the status quo? I think a strong case can be made for the former.

Looking rationally at the data that's already out there, we know that our health care system here in the U.S. isn't the best one out there. What I would really like to see on this issue is for both sides to work together, rather than have one side continually muddying the water with falsehoods, and the other side being distracted with simply setting the record straight. Just imagine what could happen if that same amount of effort was put into coming up with the best possible health care plan.

Numerous typos were corrected after this entry was originally posted. Additionaly, the sentence, "And it's not as if I chose two radical fringe elements to be easy targets - one was the vice presidential candidate, and the other was the Speaker of the House," was not in the original entry.

Posted by Jeff on Thursday, Aug 13 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Last year, Simon Singh wrote an article in the UK Guardian that was critical of chiropractics. In response, the British Chiropractic Association sued him for libel, and actually won the case. Singh is obviously appealing the judgment, but unfortunately, in the UK, the burden of proof in libel cases is on the accused, not the accusers.

Today, apparently, a bit of a grass roots movement has been started to re-post Singh's article on multiple websites and blogs. Since I agree with Singh's article, and since I think the UK libel laws are very bad for free speech, it seemed that joining in and re-posting the article on this site was the thing to do. So, below is the infamous article that got Singh in hot water. Following Orac's example, I'm posting the original article in full, with those statements that a few others have decided to edit out in bold (another re-post with more details of Singh's case is at the Science Based Medicine site.)

Some practitioners claim it is a cure-all but research suggests chiropractic therapy can be lethal

Simon Singh
The Guardian, Saturday April 19 2008

This is Chiropractic Awareness Week. So let's be aware. How about some awareness that may prevent harm and help you make truly informed choices? First, you might be surprised to know that the founder of chiropractic therapy, Daniel David Palmer, wrote that, "99% of all diseases are caused by displaced vertebrae". In the 1860s, Palmer began to develop his theory that the spine was involved in almost every illness because the spinal cord connects the brain to the rest of the body. Therefore any misalignment could cause a problem in distant parts of the body.

In fact, Palmer's first chiropractic intervention supposedly cured a man who had been profoundly deaf for 17 years. His second treatment was equally strange, because he claimed that he treated a patient with heart trouble by correcting a displaced vertebra.

You might think that modern chiropractors restrict themselves to treating back problems, but in fact they still possess some quite wacky ideas. The fundamentalists argue that they can cure anything. And even the more moderate chiropractors have ideas above their station. The British Chiropractic Association claims that their members can help treat children with colic, sleeping and feeding problems, frequent ear infections, asthma and prolonged crying, even though there is not a jot of evidence. This organisation is the respectable face of the chiropractic profession and yet it happily promotes bogus treatments.

I can confidently label these treatments as bogus [changed to "utter nonsense" in the scrubbed version] because I have co-authored a book about alternative medicine with the world's first professor of complementary medicine, Edzard Ernst. He learned chiropractic techniques himself and used them as a doctor. This is when he began to see the need for some critical evaluation. Among other projects, he examined the evidence from 70 trials exploring the benefits of chiropractic therapy in conditions unrelated to the back. He found no evidence to suggest that chiropractors could treat any such conditions.

But what about chiropractic in the context of treating back problems? Manipulating the spine can cure some problems, but results are mixed. To be fair, conventional approaches, such as physiotherapy, also struggle to treat back problems with any consistency. Nevertheless, conventional therapy is still preferable because of the serious dangers associated with chiropractic.

In 2001, a systematic review of five studies revealed that roughly half of all chiropractic patients experience temporary adverse effects, such as pain, numbness, stiffness, dizziness and headaches. These are relatively minor effects, but the frequency is very high, and this has to be weighed against the limited benefit offered by chiropractors.

More worryingly, the hallmark technique of the chiropractor, known as high-velocity, low-amplitude thrust, carries much more significant risks. This involves pushing joints beyond their natural range of motion by applying a short, sharp force. Although this is a safe procedure for most patients, others can suffer dislocations and fractures.

Worse still, manipulation of the neck can damage the vertebral arteries, which supply blood to the brain. So-called vertebral dissection can ultimately cut off the blood supply, which in turn can lead to a stroke and even death. Because there is usually a delay between the vertebral dissection and the blockage of blood to the brain, the link between chiropractic and strokes went unnoticed for many years. Recently, however, it has been possible to identify cases where spinal manipulation has certainly been the cause of vertebral dissection.

Laurie Mathiason was a 20-year-old Canadian waitress who visited a chiropractor 21 times between 1997 and 1998 to relieve her low-back pain. On her penultimate visit she complained of stiffness in her neck. That evening she began dropping plates at the restaurant, so she returned to the chiropractor. As the chiropractor manipulated her neck, Mathiason began to cry, her eyes started to roll, she foamed at the mouth and her body began to convulse. She was rushed to hospital, slipped into a coma and died three days later. At the inquest, the coroner declared: "Laurie died of a ruptured vertebral artery, which occurred in association with a chiropractic manipulation of the neck."

This case is not unique. In Canada alone there have been several other women who have died after receiving chiropractic therapy, and Professor Ernst has identified about 700 cases of serious complications among the medical literature. This should be a major concern for health officials, particularly as under-reporting will mean that the actual number of cases is much higher.

Bearing all of this in mind, I will leave you with one message for Chiropractic Awareness Week - if spinal manipulation were a drug with such serious adverse effects and so little demonstrable benefit, then it would almost certainly have been taken off the market.

- Simon Singh is the co-author of Trick or Treatment? Alternative Medicine on Trial

www.simonsingh.net

Posted by Jeff on Wednesday, Jul 29 | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I received another of those e-mail forwards that prompted me to write a response to the person who forwarded it to me. This was a long one, so I'm not going to include it here or my full response (after a little googling, here's the original blog entry the e-mail was copied from). It's pretty typical of what you hear coming from the right these days - a handful of things I agree with, a few things that are objectively wrong, a few things I subjectively disagree with, and a lot of complaining.

Anyway, one of the major themes of themes of the e-mail was something I hear a lot from my more conservative friends, about how they've worked hard, and don't want to have their tax dollars going to support lazy people who don't work as hard as them. To simplify their viewpoint just a bit, they see America as the land of opportunity, so the only reason most unsuccessful people are unsuccessful is because they don't work hard enough, and they consider those who want to help the unsuccessful to be bleeding heart liberals. So, I've adapted the portion of my response to the e-mail that addressed that sentiment and put it in this blog entry.

There's no doubt that many successful people have worked hard to get where they are, but I think a little perspective is needed.

I'll use myself as an example. I feel I've done pretty well so far. I studied hard in school, kept my act together, stayed out of trouble, and I feel I have a pretty good work ethic. But, I recognize how extremely fortunate I was to be born into the family I was. I had two parents in a stable relationship, who were both very supportive and who had/have an active interest in what I did, and who weren't so busy working multiple jobs that they were unable to be involved in my life. They made enough money to keep a stable lifestyle - never having to worry about where the next meal was coming from, or whether or not we'd get evicted because we couldn't make the rent. Even college was assumed - I knew my parents would pay for whatever I couldn't get covered by scholarships.

Now, compare that to someone I know (but who would rather I didn't use her name on this blog). Her dad died when she was 4. She left to a new country, and started elementary school without knowing a lick of English. Her mom did remarry, but the man was, to put it frankly, an asshole. But, because of her mom's religious convictions, she didn't divorce the man until much later than she should have. My acquaintance dropped out of school before starting high school so that she could work full time to help support her younger brothers and sisters, but she still managed to study on her own and get her GED the same year she would have graduated from high school. When the opportunity arose, she put herself through college and got her degree. But, being a bit naive because she didn't have any high school guidance counselors to give her advice, she didn't realize the opportunities she had for financial aid, and so ended up paying for a good portion of her education through credit cards and out of pocket.

So yes, I know I've worked to get where I am, but comparing it to someone like my acquaintance, it's obvious just how many more obstacles she had to overcome, and how much harder she had to work to get to where she is today. It's no surprise that all of my parents' children got college degrees, while my acquaintance was the only one in her family that managed to do it.

Now, whether or not you think kids that were born into less fortunate circumstances deserve a helping hand from the government and our tax dollars is still a subjective question, but I'm not going to be so smug as to say that if those kids just worked as hard as I did, that they'd end up as successful as I have.

On a related note, I wanted to discuss generally the concept of helping others in society. Even if you ignore compassion, there can be pragmatic reasons for doing so. For example, where the e-mail discussed drug addicts, look at it this way. Assume that there's a person addicted to a dangerous drug like heroin. You can ignore the problem, but because of his desparation to get money to support his addiction, he'll probably end up turning into a criminal, and may end up robbing your house or injuring you or your family. You could lock him up in prison, but then we're stuck supporting him with taxpayer money, and he's nothing more than a burden on society. And once he's back out, he's liable to go right back to his drug habit and criminal behavior. Or, you could get him treatment, after which he can go back to being a productive member of society. A little up front cost could end up being a better investment.

For a non-hypothetical case, consider homeless alcoholics. Seattle recently started a pilot program where 75 homeless alcoholics received free housing, no strings attached, not even requiring the residents to quit drinking. In the first year, Seattle saved over $2 million due to reduced jail/medical costs. So, even if someone doesn't think those people deserve help, or considers it a free ride, the end result is that it still helps save taxpayer money.
http://www.jointogether.org/news/headlines/inthenews/2008/seattle-saves-money-by-housing.html

I'm not saying that there aren't problems in government programs that need to be fixed (I still like Eric Jones's idea of compulsory birth control drugs while on welfare - if you can't even support yourself, why create another life you can't support), but it doesn't do any good to pretend that we have complete control over our own destinies, and that people are in dire straits simply because they're lazier than us. As the old saying goes, don't judge a person till you've walked a mile in their shoes.

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Jul 24 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Last week, I got an e-mail forward of a transcript of a Tea Party speech. The person forwarding it to me asked for comments, so I spent some time writing a response. A slightly modified version of that response is presented below. Everything from the original e-mail is indented in blockquotes, and my comments are interspersed throughout. His speach was too long to respond to every single point, but I did respond to quite a bit of it. I tried to clean up the formatting and weird characters from the e-mail forward, and apologize if I made any mistakes.

THIS MAN HIT THE NAIL ON THE HEAD

Dr. Donald May's Tea Party Speech in Lubbock , TX

AT THE TEA PARTY, a black man, Dr. Donald May delivered this message from the courthouse steps in Lubbock. He electrified the audience like I haven't seen in a long time. His delivery was masterful. I am sorry you could not see him in action. Anyway, I thought you might enjoy his words. The news media were there, but not one word of this man’s appearance ever appeared on TV or in print, even though he completely dominated the scene.

No comment, other than wondering why whoever wrote the e-mail thought the man's skin color was relevant to the story. It's about like reporting the color shoes he was wearing.

This is A Time For Courage April 15, 2009 - 11:49 pm

--------------------------------------------------------

"Ladies and gentlemen, This is a time for courage.

"We are gathered here today on the Plains of West Texas in common purpose. We are here to remind our government that this is our country, We the People are still in charge, and our government is still our servant and not our master.

I agree - there's a reason they're called public servants. It's also why I don't like hearing presidents referred to as the leader of the free world. The president is merely the head of one branch of government.

"Our Nation’s founding document is The Declaration of Independence. It tells us that our rights come from God and not from a small group of elite men and women.

No - the Declaration of Independence was a declaration of war against the British, and carries no weight in current U.S. law. The Constitution is the founding document of our current government, and the Constitution makes no mention at all of any god. Additionally, the actual wording in the Declaration is "...that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights..." Many of the founding fathers, including the Declaration's author, Jefferson, were either deists or Unitarians. Their views on religion were decidedly different from what's considered orthodox (for example, believing that Jesus was merely an inspirational teacher, and neither a miracle worker nor the son of God). So, they may have believed that rights came from a creator, but their idea of the creator wasn't the same as what most Christians think. (http://www.earlyamericanhistory.net/founding_fathers.htm)

"Our Constitution starts with the words “We the People." Our Constitution was written for ordinary Americans like you and me. Our Constitution protects us from our government and from the politicians.

I like the Constitution. It's a good document, and has served our country well. But you can't rewrite history. It was written for white males. It was only later amendments that made it fully applicable to all races and to women. Other than that, yes, the Constitution does help protect us from the government.

"Our President has complained that our Constitution gives ordinary people too much protection. He has ridiculed us for the high value we place on our Bibles, our guns, our personal property, and our liberty. He tells us we do not deserve to keep the money we have earned. We are told freedom has not worked. Personal responsibility, free enterprise, and Liberty have not been effective. Our government will now make more of our decisions for us. Other than our military, I can think of not one government agency I have ever found to be helpful.

I know I don't follow current events and politics as much as I should, but I haven't heard of Obama ridiculing those things. After a little Google searching, all the complaints I've found of Obama ridiculing the Bible are directed at his 'Call to Renewal' Keynote Address from 2006 (http://www.citizenlink.org/pdfs/06-24-08-obama-call-to-renewal.pdf), and only a small portion of it, at that. After reading the speech, and the section where he discusses Bible verses, it doesn't seem like ridicule at all - merely pointing out the problems of trying to use the Bible as the basis for laws in a pluralistic society. After all, Obama is Christian and takes the Bible pretty seriously himself.

The one area where I do agree with May (although I don't know if Obama has used ridicule here), is that Obama does support gun control. He does seem to be further left on that issue than most. However, he's not so extreme that he's going to veto the recently passed bill on credit card reform because of the added provision to allow loaded hand guns in national parks.

I find it surprising that May doesn't like any government agencies besides the military. Personally, I kind of like the Interstate Highway System. I also think NASA does some pretty good things, not to mention the FDA and EPA. The National Park system is pretty nice. On the local level, I'm glad we have police and fire departments. Really, there are a lot of government agencies that I think do a fine job. It's only the ones that screw up that make the headlines. And, like I mentioned the other day, I think a lot of why the government looks bad compared to private business is because the government has to be open about their spending. When big corporations waste money, they don't report it.

And regarding the military, now that I've lived in a town where a significant proportion of the population is affiliated with a military base, and I've heard the stories of what goes on, I'd hardly call the military an ideal organization. There's plenty of waste, politics, cover up, and all the other negatives you'd expect from a large bureaucracy.

"And speaking of our military, how about those Navy Seals blowing the heads off those three terrorist pirates? Don’t you just wish our entire government would function with such efficiency, professionalism, and courage? We watch in disbelief as our beloved United States is weakened economically, militarily, and morally by a radical President and his eager accomplices... What has taken generations to build is systematically destroyed and replaced with the same Socialist evil that brought poverty, destruction, and despair to untold hundreds of millions.

Regarding his comment on the Navy Seals - they're a small, elite group. It would be very difficult to run the entire government as efficiently as special forces. That's why Lockheed has the Skunk Works, Boeing has the Phantom Works, and why small companies in general can do things that big companies can't.

Obama may be left of George Bush, but I'd hardly call him a radical.

"The problems we face today have occurred because we have not defended our Nation from Socialism. For too long we have allowed the wrong people to make the worst possible decisions. The Bible warns us of class hatred. The radical leadership of our government daily fans the evil flames of class envy. Our European and Canadian friends beg us to not make the same Socialist mistakes they did. The President of the European Union warned our President that his Socialist economic plans are taking the world down the “road to Hell.”

I guess May is referring to the stimulus package here, since that's what Topolanek was referring to in his "road to Hell" statement (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/world/europe/26czech.html?_r=1). However, Topolanek was hardly speaking for all of Europe - no more so than thinking that Obama or Bush speak/spoke for all U.S. citizens. At the time Topolanek made the statement, the UK was pushing for increased government spending, while Germany and France opposed further increases. Many European leaders were not happy with him for making that particular statement.

I'll admit - economics is not my strong point, but looking back at the Great Depression, it seems like some amount of government spending does help to pull a country out of a recession/depression. Hoover tried to keep a balanced budget, and didn't do much to help the country out of the Depression. FDR had his New Deal, which seemed to ease economic problems a bit, but still didn't pull us out of the Depression. Then we entered WWII, and had a huge increase in government spending (and from a long term point of view, there's not much more useless spending than military equipment that doesn't build your nation's infrastructure and that's going to be sent to the scrap yard as soon as the war is over), and finally got out of the Depression. How much of that was psychological vs. government spending, I'm not sure, but the government spending certainly didn't seem to hurt.

If May was referring to something other than the stimulus packages, the policy I've personally heard referred to as socialism the most often is universal health care. I don't understand why everyone is so against it. Compared to industrialized nations with universal health care, the U.S. spends about twice the amount on health care (from either a per capita or GDP basis), but our quality of care isn't any better and we have less access to physicians (http://scienceblogs.com/denialism/2009/05/are_patients_in_universal_heal.php). Either socialism isn't all that bad, or pundits are throwing around the term where it doesn't apply.

"The path to power for Socialists includes taking God and guns from the citizens. Without spiritual and physical protection, people cannot defend themselves and their liberty. They soon become slaves. We are angered that our President apologizes for the exceptionalism and heroism of the United States of America . We are deeply troubled he told others the United States is not a Christian nation. We are angered that we have been called cowards and racists because we oppose Socialism. Socialism is not racial. Socialism is an equal opportunity destroyer. We are angered that a recent Department of Homeland Security report has singled out our military men and women who are returning home as being radical threats. The report also characterizes you and me as right-wing extremists and radicals because we favor smaller government and lower taxes.

Again, I'm not convinced Obama is a socialist, but ignoring that, how does socialism have anything to do with religion or guns? It's an economic policy. (Citing the U.S.S.R. would be about like citing pre-Civil War U.S. society to say that capitalism leads to slavery.)

If May is upset that someone doesn't consider the U.S. a Christian nation, he would have been furious at our second president, John Adams, and the entire U.S. Senate from 1797. The Treaty of Tripoli, read aloud to the Senate (it was only a couple pages) and approved unanimously, contained the following statement, "As the government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian Religion..." (http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/buckner_tripoli.html). The Senate made a point to record the vote, and Adams issued the statement, "Now be it known, That I John Adams, President of the United States of America, having seen and considered the said Treaty do, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, accept, ratify, and confirm the same, and every clause and article thereof. And to the End that the said Treaty may be observed and performed with good Faith on the part of the United States, I have ordered the premises to be made public; And I do hereby enjoin and require all persons bearing office civil or military within the United States, and all other citizens or inhabitants thereof, faithfully to observe and fulfill the said Treaty and every clause and article thereof." [emphasis mine]

"You and I are average citizens who believe just like most of our fellow Americans. We want our government to leave us alone and to keep its hands off our money, our religion, or guns, our private property, and our lives. We demand that our government stop spending money it does not have.

I mostly agree with that (I do recognize that the government's going to get some amount of my money as taxes to support public services). In regard to the deficit spending part, at least, it would be nice to have a return to the Clinton era - the last time the federal government had a balanced budget. On the other hand, I don't know enough about economics to know if Keynes was right about how to get out of a depression.

"Stop confiscating our money and private property.

"Stop printing money.

"Stop subsidizing Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the other failed financial institutions and companies.

"Mr. President, stop appointing tax cheats to positions of power and influence.

"Mr. President, secure our borders.

"Mr. President, do not divert money from our missile defense, F-22 Raptors, and other vital military equipment. This gives encouragement, aid, and comfort to our enemies. Protecting us is your number one job.

Nothing really to disagree with here (except again - I don't know enough about economics to comment on Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, or the bailouts). I do find it a bit ironic that someone who wants small government and limited spending wants a big military, though May did already say that the military was the only government agency he liked.

"Mr. President, do not give voting rights to millions of illegal aliens and felons. You have no more right to create new voters for your benefit than you do to use our money to buy the 2010 and 2012 Elections.

Nothing to disagree with here, either, but it seems like a straw man. I've never heard of Obama pushing for giving voting rights to illegal immigrants or felons - easier paths to legalization for immigrants, possibly, but not voting rights for non-citizens.

"We gather peacefully here today because there is a growing concern for what our government is doing to us and to our future. We fear for the very survival of our Republic. Yet there is much to make us hopeful and to fill our hearts with optimism and courage. This is still our country! The Constitution of the Unites States belongs to We the People. Our Constitution still protects us from our government.

Nothing to disagree with here, either, except possibly the extreme rhetoric ("We fear for the very survival of our Republic." Really?)

"Call every possible elected official, including our President, Vice President, and the Speaker of the House. Demand that they stop stealing our money and giving it to ACORN and their other political supporters in order to buy votes. Call Senators Cornyn and Hutchison, and (your) Representative. Thank them. Urge them to do much more. Remind them now is a time for action and not for campaigning.

I've never understood conservative's big problem with ACORN. It's an organization that mainly just tries to get people to register to vote. Sure, their organization was taken advantage of by a few unscrupulous employees who wanted to get paid without actually going door to door, but as a whole, they don't seem to be some malicious organization trying to engage in any widespread deception or illegal activity (http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/the_whoppers_of_2008_--_the_sequel.html). Is there something about ACORN that I don't know about?

"Volunteer to work on our 2010 Census. Confront ACORN. Keep our Census honest. We must not allow our President to take control of our Census for his political advantage.

Again, this seems like a straw man. ACORN isn't trying to cheat the census (as far as I know), and I've never heard of Obama trying to do anything to cheat on the census.

"We must replace as much of our far left Congress as possible in 2010. Get involved... Do not let ACORN control our 2010 Election.

Far left? The House just recently passed the credit card reform bill with an added provision allowing people to carry loaded guns in National Parks. That seems pretty moderate to me. The Green Party is left. Communist Party USA is far left. Freedom Socialist Party / Radical Women is far left. The Party for Socialism and Liberation is far left. Socialist Action is far left. Most Democrats - not so much. (http://www.politics1.com/parties.htm)

"Talk with someone every day who does not understand our nation’s history and our great heritage. Tell them why the United States is a good and prosperous nation. It still remains that brightly lit city on the hill... It still is the best hope for all mankind.

"Brightly lit city on the hill?" Check out the following page:
http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2005/2005-11.html

Ignore all the religious interpretation, and just scroll down to the figures at the bottom (you have to click on the links to see each figure). As far as murders/100,000 people, under-five mortality/1000 births, life expectancy, 15-19 year old gonorrhea infections/100,000 people, 15-19 year old syphilis infections/100,000 people, 15-19 year old abortions/1000 people, and 15-17 year old births & pregnancies/1000 people, the U.S. is worse off than almost every other prosperous democracy. Portugal is worse off than us in under-five mortality; Portugal, Italy, and Denmark are worse than us in life expectancy; and we're middle of the road in 15-24 year old suicides/100,000 people; but in all other measures in the study the U.S. was the worst. We may still be seen as the land of opportunity, but we definitely have some major problems.

"Talk with all of the young people you can find. They are our future. Many do not understand what they have and that their future is being destroyed.

I agree that education is very important. I'm always shocked by the ignorance of our citizens.

"Encourage your elected State officials to pass legislation that will protect us from our Federal government. Governor Rick Perry and others are doing that right now for Texas . Thank them and pray for them.

I do think the federal government has too much power right now (consider how the EPA wouldn't allow California to set their own emissions standards that were stricter than federal standards - http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/19/washington/20epa-web.html), but I don't think it's as big of a problem as some people make it out to be. We live in different times than when the nation was founded, and a strong federal government seems more advantageous now than it would have to an agrarian society. That said, I do think the executive branch in particular has too much power, and I'd like to see the legislative and judicial branches get some of their power back.

"This is a time for strong peaceful action. Let us pray that We the People can quickly return our government to its Constitutional responsibilities. Our President and Congress were elected to be our servants and not our masters...

Again, I agree. I think the executvie branch in particular has too much power. The ACLU has a list of the 10 most egregious abuses of power since 9/11, and I would love to see reforms to where things like that can't happen again (http://www.aclu.org/safefree/general/26684res20060906.html). The executive branch should not be able to claim 'executive privilege' or 'national security' to avoid following the laws of the land.

"May God help our President and Congress to quickly realize the error of their ways and stop their reckless and unwarranted spending, cut our taxes, and reduce the size of our Federal bureaucracy. If they do not, may God grant us the courage and determination to vote them out of power next year.

Even if I did think the current government needed to be voted out - who's the alternative? We just got through 6 years of a Republican dominated federal government (both executive and legislative), followed by 2 years of a Republican executive. I didn't see fiscal responsibility during those years. We went from a budget surplus under Clinton to deficit spending under Bush. Perhaps May is a Libertarian, but I don't think there's much chance for a Libertarian dominated government anytime soon.

"May God richly bless and protect each of you, and our Constitution, as together we pursue Liberty !" Delivered at the Lubbock , Texas , TEA Party

by Dr. Donald May

Tax Day, 15 April 2009

Anyway, those are my comments. In general, other than the platitudes, I don't agree with most of what May said. I've admitted that economics is not my strong suit, but considering how erroneous May was in the areas I do know about, I'm not sure how much to trust him in other areas. I do agree with him, however, that the executive branch has too much power, and that not enough people see government as public servants.

Posted by Jeff on Friday, May 29 | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, I didn't write any real entries this week. I did the same thing that I've already done a few times - somebody wrote a comment on one of my blog entries, and I spent all week writing them a response. Anyway, some people may find it interesting, so you can go read it in the comment section of Book Review - Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters.

Posted by Jeff on Saturday, May 16 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Somehow, I got signed up for a newsletter from some crazy ex-Navy chaplain. I don't know if someone reads this blog and thought it would do me some good, if it was someone I'd contacted through work who thought I'd like it (I'm the webmaster, so I contact lots of people), or if it's just plain old spam. Being the webmaster for two sites and having my e-mail address plastered all over the web, I'm used to getting plenty of spam, so I usually just ignore these e-mails.

The guy who sends this particular newsletter, Gordon James Klingenschmitt, was court-martialed by the Navy for appearing in uniform at partisan events and for disobeying orders, but then decided to whine that it was religious persecution (I don't know how Sheppard AFB compares to the rest of the military, but being outspoken about Christianity certainly doesn't hurt your career there). Not only that, but he continues to use the title of chaplain, coming perilously close to impersonating an officer (some would say he's crossed the line, but I'm still getting the e-mails, so I guess the Navy doesn't have a big problem with it).

Anyway, like I said, I usually ignore these e-mails, but the latest one from Sunday caught my eye with the word, "swine," in the subject line. I was curious to see what "Chaps" had to say on the subject. Boy, was it a doozy, and not just for his scientific illiteracy (& redundancy - avian bird flu is H5N1).

Let us pray. Almighty God, we pray for your protection this week, against the H1N1 influenza virus, formerly known as the swine flu or the avian bird flu, which is now spreading around the globe in unprecedented pandemic proportions, and killing people not only in Mexico, but in Europe and now here in America. We pray it will not develop into one of the natural disasters which Jesus predicted in Matthew 24 as a sign of the end. God do not destroy us, but forgive our sins. In Jesus name, Amen.

I skimmed through his other prayers, and this one seemed worth posting, too.

Let us pray. Almighty God, today we pray for Pennslvania, who was betrayed by Senator Arlen Specter, who abandoned the pro-life, pro-marriage Republican party to join the pro-abortion, pro-homosexual Democrat party, and for the sake of selfish preservation, put the entire nation in jeopardy of a 60-seat filibuster-proof evil majority. God help Pennsylvania elect a true conservative, and defeat Arlen Specter in the 2010 election. We pray from Isaiah 21:2, the traitor betrays, the looter takes loot. God, help us attack, and bring to an end all the groaning he caused. In Jesus name, Amen.

Wow, I wonder how many other people think like this guy, or take him seriously. I hope it's not too many.

Posted by Jeff on Tuesday, May 5 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

What is it with crazy e-mails? Do people always have to add inane commentary to something? I got the following e-mail the other day (presumably for the video itself, and not the text that went along with it, but most people usually just hit forward and don't edit the text). The video that was attached is the same as the YouTube video I have embedded below (which I first saw before I even moved down here to Texas).

Subject: Fw: FW: Russian Jet - READ MESSAGE BEFORE WATCHING VIDEO

AGAIN, PLEASE READ FIRST!!

Wonder how many Boeing/Lockheed/Northrop-Grumman engineers bailed out on our country to accept handsome cash rewards for their technology they gave the Russians.

Russia now has the #1 fighter plane in the world ... SU-30 - Vectored Thrust with Canards.

As you watch this airplane, look at the canards moving along side of, and just below the canopy rail.

The "canards" are the small wings forward of the main wings.

The smoke and contrails provide a sense of the actual flight path, sometimes in reverse direction.

This video is of an in-flight demonstration flown by the Russian's-30MK fighter aircraft.

You will not believe what you are about to see.

The fighter can stall from high speed, stopping forward motion in seconds (full stall).

Then it demonstrates an ability to descend tail first without causing a compressor stall.

It can also recover from a flat spin in less than a minute.

These maneuver capabilities don't exist in any other aircraft in the world today.

Take a look at the video with the sound up.

This aircraft is of concern to U.S. and NATO planners.

We don't know which nations will soon be flying the SU-30MK, hopefully China isn't one of them.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Note:

Friends worked with advanced aircraft flight control systems and concepts for many years as an extension of stability control and means of control.

Canards and vectored thrust were among many concepts examined to extend our fighter aircraft performance.

Neither our current or next generation aircraft now poised for funding & production can in any way match the performance of this Russian aircraft NOW FLYING in any near combat situation.

Somehow the bankrupt Russian aircraft industry has out-produced our complex politically tainted aerospace industry with this technology marvel.

Scratch any ideas of close in air-to-air combat with this aircraft in the future.

Okay, let's just get a couple facts straight, first. The aircraft in the video is the Su-37, not the Su-30. Though those are both derivatives of the Su-27, and I'm not sure how much of a difference there is in their performance, anyway.

Next, and it's something you should always be suspicious of with e-mail forwards, is the time frame. The Su-30 and Su-37 are both products of the '90s. They were designed at the tail end of the Soviet hey day. And at that time, the Soviets did have a very good aerospace industry.

So, the very first line about U.S. engineers being lured to work for the Russians is just plain bogus. The Soviets could have designed (and did) a world class vectored thrust fighter on their own. Similarly, the second to last line, about a bankrupt Russian industry beating out the U.S. industry is also bogus.

Now, about the claims of this being the most agile modern fighter - well, it probably is, and it probably would have an advantage in dogfights. However, the F-22's no slouch. I've seen it an airshow, and it can do some pretty impressive maneuvers with its thrust vectoring, too. Besides, the main advantage of the F-22 is its stealth. The whole point is to shoot down your enemy without being seen, which is exactly what it's done in all the war games it's been in. And if two pilots do get stuck in a dog fight, much of it comes down to training and tactics, not the aircraft.

So yes, the Su-37 is a pretty cool plane. But no, that is not an indictment of the U.S. aviation industry.

Anyway, I'm still glad I got the forward because this is a cool video to watch.

Posted by Jeff on Wednesday, Apr 29 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Take a look at this picture. At first glance, it looks remarkably human, doesn't it?

Now, take a look at the undoctored version. Not too much different, huh?

I still marvel at the people who don't consider us as just another ape, and can't see how the other apes and us all evolved from a common ancestor.

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Apr 17 | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Just a reminder to anybody who lives in Texas - the final vote on the state science standards is this week. If you haven't already done so, write you board member today.

More Info:
Steve Schafersman's Blog
Strengths & Limitations Entry on this Blog
Results from Earlier Meeting on this Blog

Posted by Jeff on Tuesday, Mar 24 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The other day, my wife asked me why I write so much about my atheism on my blog. What am I trying to accomplish? Aren't I concerned about the possible negative consequences considering how prejudiced people can be towards atheists down here in the south?

One reason why I write so much about it is that writing things down helps me to organize my thoughts. When I'm simply thinking about things, I can have dozens of thoughts bouncing around in my head, and I may dwell on some of those thoughts, without following others to their logical conclusions. Writing those thoughts with an idea that someone else is going to read them forces me to present them coherently and to try to see the thoughts all the way through. Still, there wouldn't be any reason to publicize such writings if that was the only reason I did it.

There are actually several audiences I have in mind when I write my blog entries. One is the group of people who are very religious and have an open mind. I don't expect to 'convert' those people to atheism, but perhaps they will begin to question certain aspects of their religion and be a little less dogmatic (for example - the Christians who use the Old Testament to condemn homosexuality, but have no problem doing chores on Sunday, eating shrimp, or wearing a polyester/cotton blend shirt).

Then, there are the people who have already started to question things. I would hope that they find my essays informative and helpful. I would also hope that one more voice on the web helps them to see that they're not alone in having doubts.

The final audience is the group that's prejudiced towards atheists. The term, atheist, carries such a negative connotation in our society - many people even take it as a personal insult to be called an atheist. A recent study found atheists to be the most distrusted group out of all the options in the survey (which included other groups such as Muslims, homosexuals, Hispanics, conservative Christians, recent immigrants, Jews, Whites, and African-Americans). There really isn't any reason that it should be that way (or rankly why any of those groups should be distrusted). It's a term that simply describes one aspect of your view of the universe, and says nothing about your nature or what type of person you are. So, I would hope that those people who are prejudiced towards atheists would read my blog entries, and even if it changes nothing about how they view religion for themselves, that they will at least realize that most atheists aren't evil, amoral, hedonistic, or any of the other stereotypes that many believe. We're just normal people who happen to believe in one less thing than most.

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Feb 20 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Man, this is frustrating. There's been quite a bit of discussion recently over a small phrase in the current Texas science standards, whether to teach the "strengths and weaknesses" of scientific theories. I wrote a blog entry specifically about that language, as well as several related entries about the Board of Education (election results, teach 'both' sides, review panel, shenanigans, and Chris Comer). Basically, I considered this a rather small issue - the language has been on the books for over a decade, it doesn't explicitly call for teaching creationsim, and competent teachers are going to teach science well, anyway. The only problem is that it opens a loophole for incompetent teachers to bring up bogus claims.

Well, with as much as people have concentrated on the "strengths and weaknesses" language, it seemed like a victory when the board voted (7-7) to keep the draft standards recommend by the expert panel of scientists and teachers, which instead used the language, "The student is expected to analyze and evaluate scientific explanations using empirical evidence, logical reasoning, and experimental and observational testing". However, that sense of victory was very short lived, when Don McLeroy managed to get language inserted into the standards questioning the very concept of common descent. See Steve Schafersman's post or the Texas Freedom Network's post for more details.

I had sent an e-mail to Gail Lowe hoping to influence her decision as one of her constituents. Unfortunately, I don't think I had any effect, as she was one of the seven on the creationist side in all these votes. I'll keep on writing her for the final vote this March.

For anyone interested, my e-mail is included below the fold.

Continue reading "Texas Board of Education - Bad Results for Science Standards" »

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Jan 23 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm an atheist, but I haven't always been one. My "deconversion" was a process that began around 3 1/2 years ago, and took over a year to be more or less complete.

The process began in earnest in an attempt to reconcile the Bible with the actual history of the planet as revealed through geology and biology. I'd just recently learned how many people were creationists (prior to that, I'd naively thought most people accepted evolution and the ancient age of the Earth), and at the time Intelligent Design was making big headlines. It made me wonder if I was being a bad Christian for not taking the Bible at face value. Well, the evidence for evolution and an ancient Earth are so overwhelming that there's really no doubt over them, so I vainly thought I'd be able to write a convincing essay showing how the Bible could be interpreted figuratively and still be accepted as true. However, by the time I'd finished researching the essay, I realized that the Bible couldn't have been divinely inspired. I didn't give up Christianity all at once with that realization, but it was a big first step, and within another year or two, I'd basically become an atheist. Obviously, there was a lot more to the process than just realizing that Genesis wasn't accurate, but that's not the point of this essay, so I won't bore the reader with those details (see here or here for more details, if you're interested).

It was around 6 years ago that I met the woman who was to become my wife. At the time, she was the one having doubts. Since I was still a good Christian then, I did a good job of telling her apologetics and getting her to start going back to church again. I was even the one who insisted that we get married in a church. Consider that it was only a few years later that I so thoroughly reversed my views, and you can imagine that she felt a bit mislead.

This period is also when I took on the responsibility of becoming a father. In fact, once I began having doubts about my religion, this responsibility was one of the main things that drove me to research the issue further - how could I teach my daughter things that I wasn't sure of myself? At first, being a good Christian, there was no question on how to address religion with her - respect everybody's views, but Christianity was the true religion. But once I started having my own doubts, things weren't so easy. I want her to think for herself, and I don't want to indoctrinate her into any particular view like I was into Christianity. So, I'm extremely sensitive to pointing out to her that she's going to have to decide these things for herself. (When I was partway through my deconversion and still considered myself a deist, I wrote about this in a series of e-mails with another non-Christian parent. Some of what I'm writing here I brought up in that essay, but they're still tough issues.)

My daughter goes with one of her friends to her friend's church every Wednesday night - kind of like Sunday school, except, well, on Wednesdays. So in addition to me trying to teach her about various religions, she gets to hear about Christianity from actual believers. The thing is, without that strong pressure from parents to accept Christianity, it's not an easy thing for kids to swallow, especially when they're being raised with a respect for science. I don't mean to say that religion and science are necessarily antithetical - plenty of scientists are religious, and plenty of religious people reconcile their beliefs with what we learn through science - but science teaches you to question everything and look for evidence. In that sense, faith just doesn't cut it.

Perhaps what I worry about with her the most is that she'll say the wrong thing to the wrong person. Kids can be mean (and when it comes down to it, so can adults). With the strong emotions that religion can elicit, I worry how others would react if she were to say that her father was an atheist, or even if she decided that she herself didn't believe in God. To be honest, it was such an incident that got me to write this entry to begin with. At one of her extracurricular activities, she got into an argument with a boy over whether someone had to believe in God to be a good person, and he gave her a hard time until my wife got there at the normal time to pick her up. I don't want my daughter to have to go through things like that. I don't want to live vicariously through her and have her fighting religious battles simply because I'm an atheist. But at the same time, I don't want to lie to her just to make her life easier.

In The God Delusion, one of the points that Richard Dawkins makes is that we shouldn't call children Christian, or Muslim, or atheist, or anything of the sort. Children are still too young to have given these issues enough thought, and we shouldn't classify them based on their parents' beliefs. Oh, if that were only the case! Unfortunately, it seems to me as if freethinkers are about the only ones who think this way, and the religious have no problem applying such classifications. A part of me asks why I have to be so damn sensitive to pointing out everybody else's beliefs, when almost everybody else simply teaches their kids their own beliefs as the truth.

Sometimes, I almost wish that I hadn't started to question religion at all. Things would be so much simpler. I wouldn't have to worry about how people would treat my family if they found out my beliefs. I wouldn't question what worldview to teach my daughter, and fret over whether I was raising her properly (at least on this specific topic - I'm pretty sure parents always fret over their children). I wouldn't have to worry about her being discriminated against for simply repeating something she might overhear me say. I wouldn't feel like I had betrayed my wife.

But now that I have questioned religion, there's no going back. I didn't simply choose to be an atheist. I studied all the evidence I could find, initially in an attempt to become a better Christian, and atheism was the unavoidable conclusion. I could no more choose to go back to being a Christian than I could choose to go back to believing in Santa Claus, or choose to believe that the Earth is flat. I opened Pandora's Box, and it can't be closed again.

Posted by Jeff on Wednesday, Jan 14 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In my essay, Abadoning Christianity, I briefly discuss some similarities between Osiris and Jesus. I quoted E.A. Wallis Budge, from his introduction to his translation of the Egyptian Book of the Dead (starting on page li),

This is the story of the sufferings and death of Osiris as told by Plutarch. Osiris was the god through whose suffering and death the Egyptians hoped that his body might rise again in some transformed or glorified shape, and to him who had conquered death and had become the king of the other world the Egyptian appealed in prayer for eternal life through his victory and power. In every funeral inscription known to us, from the pyramid texts down to the roughly-written prayers upon coffins of the Roman period, what is done for Osiris is done also for the deceased, the state and condition of Osiris are the state and condition of the deceased; in a word, the deceased is identified with Osiris. If Osiris liveth for ever, the deceased will live for ever; if Osiris dieth, then will the deceased perish.

Later in the XVIIIth, or early in the XIXth dynasty, we find Osiris called ‘the king of eternity, the lord of everlastingness, who traverseth millions of years in the duration of his life, the firstborn son of the womb of Nut, begotten of Seb, the prince of gods and men, the god of gods, the king of kings, the lord of lords, the prince of princes, the governor of the world, from the womb of Nut, whose existence is everlasting, Unnefer of many froms and of many attributes, Tmu in Annu, the lord of Akert, the only one, the lord of the land on each side of the celestial Nile.’

In that essay, I wrote, "The first paragraph above, shows the similarity in roles of Osiris and Jesus – that through their resurrection humans can attain eternal life. The second paragraph shows the similarity in how they are addressed in literature, although it would be easy to see how these lofty praises could be addressed to any powerful figure. At any rate, seeing some of the important traits of Jesus in a mythical figure that predates him, does call into question the source of those concepts in Christianity."

Well, I'm currently re-reading The Egyptian Book of the Dead (I meant to be finished before my visit to the King Tut and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs Exhibition at the Dallas Museum of Art, but it's taking me a bit longer than I'd hoped). I just noticed another similarity between Osiris and Jesus (page cxxxviii).

It is to be noticed how closely the deceased is identified with Osiris, the type of incorruptibility. Osiris takes upon himself "all that is hateful" in the dead : that is, he adopts the burden of his sins; and the dead is purified by the typical sprinkling of water.

So, it's not only through Osiris's resurrection that the Egyptians thought they could attain eternal life, but they even envisioned Osiris as performing a function very similar to forgiving them of their sins.

And now that I'm through with Budge's introduction and actually getting into the Book of the Dead itself, I found an interesting passage right in the first chapter.

Thine enemy[8] is given to the (10) fire, the evil one hath fallen; his arms are bound, and his legs hath Ra taken from him. The children of (11) impotent revolt shall never rise up again.

[8 The enemy of Ra was darkness and night, or any cloud which obscured the light of the sun. The darkness personified was Apep, Nak, etc., and his attendant fiends were the mesu betesh, or 'children of unsuccessful revolt.']

So, here's a passage that sounds suspiciously like Lucifer's unsuccesful revolt from the Bible, and a subsequent banishing into a realm of fire. Although, I have a feeling that revolts against the primary deity are pretty common in mythology.

Just as a note on this, as I wrote in that essay, be careful if you plan to research this subject further. That's probably good advice for anything you plan to research, whether the old fashioned way or on the Internet, but I've found many oversimplified lists of the similarities between Christiany and previous religions that don't seem to be entirely accurate.

For further information, Budge's translation of & introduction to the book of the dead can be found here. Another online version with pictures can be found here.

Posted by Jeff on Wednesday, Jan 7 | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, let me get all my Scrooge tendencies out of the way now, because I really do enjoy Christmas and don't want to make such a negative post closer to the holiday. By the way, I was planning on making this post even before I saw Eric's recent entry over at The New Minority.

Every year around this time, you seem to get the grumpy old men types complaining about the War on Christmas, or how commercialization is ruining the true meaning of the season. Man, I wish those people could learn a bit of history and see just how silly they sound.

First, they get upset about the semantics of the whole thing, claiming that people aren't saying 'Merry Christmas' in a deliberate attempt to make the holiday more secular. Season's Greetings has been in use since the 19th century. I kind of doubt the secularists have been planning their strategy that long. I remember seeing 'Happy Holidays' on Christmas cards ever since I was a kid, back before 'the War' got started, and always just assumed it was shorter than writing 'Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year' (or you can add in Boxing Day if you're British). A few years ago, in a previous entry, I even mentioned a guy at my wife's work, who caught a bunch of flak from his coworkers for having Christmas cards that said 'Happy Holidays' instead of 'Merry Christmas,' even though the cards had Bible verses on them. Then there are the people that get upset about Xmas. Damn those 11th century monks who thought they could abbreviate 'Christ' with the Greek letter, chi. They probably thought the Chi-Ro was a good symbol for Christ, too.

Do these people even realize where many of our Christmas traditions come from, anyway? First, there's the timing. Don't they think it's a bit suspicious that the holiday falls so close to the Winter Solstice? I realize the gospels don't explicitly state when the nativity story was supposed to have taken place, but shepherds sleeping in the field at night doesn't seem like a great winter activity. And then there are all the Pagan holidays that also fall right around that time, such as Saturnalia from the 17th to to 23rd, or even Mithra's birthday (who was also known as the 'light of the world') on the 25th.

Skipping past the Romans up to the northern Europeans who started many of our Christmas traditions, even the term 'Yule Tide' comes from pagan roots. Yule was originally a late December/early January Germanic/Norse holiday honoring their gods. Odin's Wild Hunt may have even contributed to the legend of Santa Claus making his late night journey. Likewise, Christmas trees, mistletoe, and hanging evergreen clippings & wreaths also seems to be an incorporation of pagan Germanic traditions. (If you want to read what the Bible has to say about decorating a tree in your house, check out Jeremiah 10:1-5.) Many sources even claim, although I'm not sure if this is reliable or merely an urban legend, that in the 4th century, Pope Julius I officially declared Christmas to be on the 25th of December in a deliberate attempt to get pagans to start switching over to Christianity. Whatever the case, whether deliberate or not, it certainly seems that many of our Christmas traditions began as pagan winter solstice traditions.

How about the history of how Christmas has been treated on this continent? The Puritan Pilgrims, who have taken on an almost mythical aspect as the founders of our country, outlawed the celebration of Christmas from 1659 to 1681. Various Christian sects throughout our nation's history (see the same article as linked above) have also refrained from celebrating Christmas. Our founding fathers didn't see fit to declare Christmas a national holiday, and the 1st Congress worked straight through that particular day (as did many subsequent Congresses - in fact, Christmas wasn't declared a national holiday until 1870). Actually, for many of those that did celebrate Christmas, it didn't take on its warm & fuzzy family feel until the late 1800s. Prior to that, many in the U.S. followed a tradition from the Middle Ages of getting drunk and acting raucously. To quote from that article I just linked to, "In the early part of the 19th century, Christmas was, as one historian once noted, 'like a nightmarish cross between Halloween and a particularly violent, rowdy Mardi Gras.' In fact, a massive Christmas riot in 1828 led to the formation of New York City's first police force." Certainly not everyone became a drunken vandal on Christmas, just like not everyone ignored it like the Puritans or some other Protestant groups, but Christmas certainly hasn't been celebrated universally throughout our country's history in the same way it is now.

I also get tired of the persecution complex that the people who buy into the War on Christmas seem to have. Christians make up around 80% of the U.S. population. As far as representation in government, in the 109th Congress, there were 11 senators who didn't identify themselves as Christians (12 if you count Unitarians), and only 30 representatives in the House (32 if you count Unitarians). In other words, over 90% of the elected officials in the federal legislative branch are Christians. You have to go back all the way to Taft to find a president who said, "I do not believe in the divinity of Christ" (though he was still a Unitarian Christian), or all the way back to Lincoln to find a deist president, and it seems absurd to imagine a non-Christian being elected to that office anytime soon. Christians make up a very large segment of the population, and are actually over-represented in government. They are not an oppressed minority.

Okay, with all that out of my system, I just want to be sure to mention that this was not directed at Christians or Christmas in general. It was aimed at the oversensitive vocal minority who seem to think that the First Amendment only applies to people who agree with them (though perhaps that's not as small of a minority as I would like). Personally, I like Christmas. We've decorated all the rooms in the house, put up our Christmas tree, hung our lights outside, given money to the Salvation Army, donated to food drives, bought presents for friends & family, and all the other things that people like to do around this time of year. I even tell people 'Merry Christmas.' I just wish people would quit being so ignorant.

Updated 2008-12-19: In the section on pagan origins, I added everything from the Pope Julius reference to the end of the paragraph. I also made a few minor changes to the section on the history of Christmas in this country, as well as adding the final sentence to that paragraph, just to clarify things. Since I linked to so many other pages in this post, I'll make special mention here of one of those links in particular (which was also pointed out in the comments) - the Slate article was very good, and worth reading even if you don't follow any of the other links.

Posted by Jeff on Thursday, Dec 18 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I originally wrote this several weeks ago, and have been debating whether or not to actually post it. Without going into too much personal detail, I'll say that my friend is recovering well from the stroke. He still has a long road of therapy ahead of him, but he's definitely doing well. So, since tomorrow's Thanksgiving, let me say that I am thankful for all those things that I mention below.

Several weeks ago, my wife's cell phone rang at 3:30 in the morning. One of our friends was calling to tell us that her husband (also our friend) was having a stroke, and that she was taking him to the hospital. My wife got dressed to meet her there, while I stayed home to be with our daughter.

There was nothing I could do there at the house, so I thought I'd try to be practical and at least get some sleep. That didn't work at all. I was awake most of the night, and only slept in fits.

While I was laying there awake, I guess my Christian upbringing came out, and I was tempted to pray. After all, when I still believed in God, praying would have seemed like the natural thing to do. It's such a feeling of helplessness - not knowing what happened, or what's going to happen, and only being able to lay there and wait. Well, I have to admit that I did end up praying, but not to a god. No matter how strong the emotional temptation, the rational side of me knew that Yahweh was no more real than Zeus or Thor, and praying to any of those myths would have been equally ineffectual. I figured that if any of the mystical stuff that people believed in were true, the common thread to most religions was that we have souls*. And if souls did exist, then my grandparents would be the souls who were most likely to actually care about and want to help me, so I prayed to them. And, I prayed out loud, because I figured that ghosts probably wouldn't be able to read minds any easier than living people. I did recognize that I was praying more for my own peace of mind than actually hoping anything would come of it, but I figured that it couldn't cause any harm, so what did it matter, anyway. I know it all sounds silly, but that feeling of helplessness is just so strong.

Several hours later, after I dropped my daughter off at school, I headed over to the hospital. Now, I fully expected people to be praying. That's just what religious people do in times like this, and even a former christian turned atheist like me had given in to the temptation. For the most part, it didn't bother me much. Sure, it troubled me a bit on an intellectual level, but there are more important things than trying to be right all the time, and it would have taken a real jerk to argue about such things at a time like that.

But... There was one person that really irritated me - the hospital chaplain. He shouldn't have. He didn't seem like a bad guy, and maybe under different circumstances I would have like him just fine. I was probably irritated with him simply because he was a stranger intruding on us during a troubling time. Anyway, the comment he made that really ticked me off, and made me bite my tongue, was something to the effect of, "Well, it's all in the hands of the Big Surgeon, now." Don't call your myth a surgeon. Don't compare it to the hard working men and women who are doing real good. Don't sit there all smug, and pretend that praying is going to do one damn bit of good. If our friend recovers well from this stroke, I'll thank the fact that his wife was a nurse, recognized immediately the signs of a stroke, and rushed him to the hopsital. I'll thank the doctors and nurses, who spent years going to school to learn how to treat these conditions, and acted quickly and competently when our friend showed up in the ER. I'll thank the researchers, who developed the clot buster drugs that give people now a much better chance of surviving and recovering from strokes. I'll thank the researchers before them, who spent decades and centuries increasing our knowledge, to even know what a stroke is, to give any hope of how to treat it. I'll be thankful that we live in this day and age instead of a couple hundred years ago, when, prayer or no prayer, he wouldn't have had a chance.

This also reminded me of an effect that many people have noticed and commented on before - the ratcheting effect of religion. When good things happen, like our friend's recovery, people are supposed to be thankful to God for all he's done for them. But when bad things happen, like the stroke to begin with, it's all part of his mysterious divine plan, and they're supposed to accept that it must have happened for a good reason.

Well, if prayer's what it takes for people to get through tough times, let them pray. I won't try to stop them, but I won't join in, either. What I will do is continue to visit the hospital to offer my support, to run over meals, to help out with errands and chores in the coming months, and to offer any real help that I can.

* - I've written about souls on this blog before. In short, I really do doubt that we have souls, which is why I recognized I was praying for my own peace of mind more than anything else.

Posted by Jeff on Wednesday, Nov 26 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Strengths and Limitations

The Texas State Board of Education had their first hearing on school science standards. There's a lot of hoopla over a certain phrase that's been in the standards since 1988, to teach the "strengths and weaknesses" of all scientific theories. When the draft science standards were released in September, which were, according to the Dallas Morning News, created by "review committees of teachers and academics," the wording had been removed. Now, the new Science Standards Review Panel, a six member group containing three ID supporters, one of whom is even the director of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture from Washington state, have unsurprisingly put that language back into the standards, slightly reworded as "analyze and evaluate strengths and limitations" of scientific explanations, along with a recommendation for middle school students to "discuss possible alternative explanations" for scientific concepts (source).

Before I begin discussing this, since I realize that around half the population of the U.S. doesn't accept evolution, let me make it clear that evolution has, in fact, happened, and our knowledge of the history of life on this planet, although incomplete, is still pretty good. I've already posted A (Somewhat) Brief Introduction to Evolution explaining much of this, which also has links to much more in depth material on evolution. Moving on...

On the face of it, teaching strengths and weaknesses of any theory sounds like a great thing. After all, there are weaknesses in our current understanding of evolution: which is more accurate - gradualism or punctuated equilibrium; what is the relative importance of natural selection versus genetic drift versus sexual selection versus other forms of genetic change; what are the relative importances of allopatric, peripatric, parapatric, and sympatric speciation; how do epigenetics contribute to evolution; etc. But, understanding the larger debate, and recognizing that organizations like the Discovery Institute try to use this language to inject pseudoscience into students' education is what makes it worrying. I mean, just take a look at what the inappropriately named organization, Texans for Better Science Education, considers weaknesses of evolutionary theory (most of these are covered in Talk Origins' Index to Creationist Claims). If the language in the science standards opens the door to drivel like that, we're definitely doing our children a disservice.

There's also the question of what is the proper role of a pre-college education. You only get the students for 12 years, and there're a lot of knowledge and skills that they need to be taught in that time. There's one school of thought that says that it's more important to teach students how to think than what to think. I agree with this to an extent - critical thinking skills are essential to evaluating all the information the students will receive outside school. It's not as if school can cover everything, or as if our body of knowledge as a civilization is static. There will always be new challenges and new information that these students will face once they become adults, and they need to know how to approach those. However, evaluating claims about the world also relies on a strong foundation of knowledge. It's hard to evaluate someone claiming the Earth is flat without a working knowledge of at least geography, and maybe a little bit of astronomy and physics. So, it is up to schools to find the proper balance of teaching that foundation along with critical thinking skills.

And this is where the "strengths and weaknesses" or "strengths and limitations" requirement as part of the science curriculum comes into question. How much can actually be covered in a high school biology class? Can we really give students the good strong foundation they need in evolutionary theory before addressing some of those weaknesses I listed above? Should it just be a token paragraph as part of the lesson plan about future research opportunies? Think about another high school science topic - physics (since this requirement is about all science topics, not just biology). There's so much to teach students as is (universal gravitation, forces, vectors, friction, etc.). How much time do you think teachers should be devoting to describing the weaknesses in the classical (Newtonian) model, other than maybe a brief, single day lesson about Einsteinian relativity?

Out of all the controversies about teaching evolution in the various states of this country, this current one in Texas, other than generating some heat in the blogosphere and among a few interested parties, is probably pretty mild. After all, it's only a short phrase that's already been in place for the past 10 years, and not even one that explicitly requires teaching of creationism or Intelligent Design. With competent teachers, evolution will still be taught well. And with the creationist teachers, I don't know that the phrase would make much of a difference, anyway. The place where I see this having the biggest impact, and which will probably turn into a bigger battle, is when it comes time to choose the new textbooks. I'd hate to see our state waste taxpayer money on a book like Explore Evolution: The Arguments For and Against Neo-Darwinism.

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Nov 21 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Not too long ago, I blogged about how the Texas Board of Education had nomianted three creationists to the six member Texas Science Standards Review Panel. What's more, two of those creationists aren't even from Texas, and have published a textbook that could potentially be adopted by the school system (no conflict of interest there).

Well, the way the panel was chosen was that they had to each be nominated by two BoE members. The six members who nominated the creationists to the panel were Cynthia Dunbar and David Bradley (nominated Meyer), Barbara Cargill and Ken Mercer (nominated Seelke), and Gail Lowe and Terri Leo (nominated Garner). (more info at Texas Citizens for Science)

Creationist BoE members up for relection included David Bradley and Gail Lowe (both running against Democratic challengers), and Terri Leo, Barbara Cargill, and Patricia Hardy (running against third party challengers). The results are in, and all five were re-elected.

On the plus side, two rational board members, Mary Helen Berlanga and Mavis Knight, both up against Republican challengers, were also re-elected. So, at least the creationists didn't gain any power.

I know I probably shouldn't be surprised by this, but it's still disappointing.

Added 2008-11-05 Cynthia Dunbar wasn't up for re-election this time around, but this gives a good idea of just what type of people we have on our BoE down here. She posted the following comment to the Christian Worldview website a few days before the election.

So we can imagine the blatant disregard for our Constitution, but what other threats does an Obama administration pose? We have been clearly warned by his running mate, Joe Biden, that America will suffer some form of attack within the first 6 months of Obama’s administration. However, unlike Joe, I do not believe this “attack” will be a test of Obama’s mettle. Rather, I perceive it will be a planned effort by those with whom Obama truly sympathizes to take down the America that is threat to tyranny.

Argh. I can't believe these people have control over the curriculum for my daughter's education.

Posted by Jeff on Wednesday, Nov 5 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

While reading a story in the Houston Chronicle on the recent naming of three ID proponents to the six member Texas Science Standards Review Panel, I read the following quote, "Close-minded efforts to ban students from (hearing both sides) is dangerous and a clear detriment to students."

It used to be that when I heard this argument about teaching 'both' sides regarding evolution, I'd sarcastically wonder to myself if that meant the right side and the wrong side. However, once I got to thinking about it a little more, I realized how biased the statement actually was. Using the word 'both' implies two sides, but what are these two sides? On the one hand, there's obviously the side of evolution, the pro-science side, backed by overwhelming evidence and endorsed by the scientific community. But what, exactly, is the other side? That Tepeu and Gucamatz created all plants and animals through their thoughts; that Pangu created the earth after emerging from a cosmic egg, and after dying his body became the sun, moon, stars, creatures, and plants; that Ra, alone and lonely, masturbated to create two more gods, and those gods went on to have children gods, who eventually created everything, including the plants and animals; that Yahweh created plants and animals a couple days after he created the Earth, or that some unspecified intelligence has been tinkering with life throughout the ages?

The problem is, there are many more than two sides concerning what the various peoples of the world believe and have believed concerning how life got here. Now, if any of those stories were actually true, that would be one thing. After all, science is about following the evidence wherever it leads. It just so happens that all of the evidence supports evolution. Unless you're a proponent of Last Thursdayism, there's really no question that evolution has occured.

When someone says to teach 'both' sides, what they usually mean is evolution, and their particular interpretation of the Bible. They're not interested in actual fairness. They want to see their religious view elevated above all other religious views to be taught in school.

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Oct 31 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've updated the Religious Essays section of this site. Previously, the essays were available only as .pdf files. I figured that that might discourage some people from reading them. So, I've made the individual essays all available as regular HTML files. Hopefully, this will make them more accessible to people who don't want to download .pdf files. I did keep the .pdf file that's a collection of all the essays, but I changed the page layout slightly. I converted it to a 5.5"x8.5" sheet. That's half the size of a regular letter size paper, which works out just right for using a duplexer to print 4 pages per sheet of paper, and folding all the sheets in half to make a little booklet out of it (and yes, I realize I'm probably the only person that's ever going to do that). I also added two new essays, which are adaptations of blog entries I wrote recently, Further Musings on the Soul and Pascal's Wager, as well as expanding the essay, Problems with a Day-Age Interpretation of Genesis, using some information I wrote for a comment on a blog entry.

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Oct 3 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

For some reason, one of people's biggest problems with evolution seems to be that us and the other great apes all came from the same ancestors. One of the first objections I hear from creationists is if I actually believe that we evolved from apes. And honestly, it never seemed like a big deal to me*. Here, take a look at these pictures of a bonobo and a human:

Continue reading "Why Do People Have a Problem With Our Relation to Other Apes?" »

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Sep 12 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A discussion of Pascal's Wager seems nearly obligatory for a blog that deals with skeptical themes. So, even though others have already covered this more eloquently than I could hope for, here's my take on this argument.

If you're the type that gets involved at all in religious discussions (and maybe even if you aren't), you've probably heard some version of Pascal's Wager before, even if you haven't heard it referred to as such. The argument is named for Blaise Pascal, a 17th century French philosopher. It appeared in The Pensées, a post-humous publication of a collection of Pascal's notes. However, the argument is simple enough that many people have no doubt come up with it independently. So, rather than discuss Pascal's original description of the "wager," I'll discuss the version that I've heard most often, personally. (And, in defense of Pascal, I'ver heard that he never intended this argument to be concrete logical proof, but rather as a way to get people thinking about the issue).

The argument goes something like this. There either is a God, or there isn't. You either believe in God, or you don't. That gives four possible outcomes (these are usually shown in a table, but I'm just going to list them):

1. God exists & you believe - You'll get into heaven when you die, an infinite reward.
2. God exists & you don't believe - You'll go to hell when you die, an infinite punishment.
3. God doesn't exist & you believe - You'll lose nothing (or, according to some, even live a better life).
4. God doesn't exist & you don't believe - You can do whatever you want during life, a finite reward.

Presented this way, belief in God would seem to be the logical choice. However, there are definitely problems with the argument.

The first problem I'll note is the one that first occured to me when I was still a Christian - people cannot simply choose to believe in something. Take for example, leprechauns. Many people have sincerely believed in them in the past, but no matter how much I may want to find a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, I can't make myself believe that leprechauns actually exist. It's the same way with God. If you've given serious thought to the issue, you can't simply make yourself believe (or disbelieve) just because you'd like the outcome. To claim belief in that way would be insincere, and, according to most people's concept of Yahweh, God doesn't merely want lip service. He wants actual, sincere faith.

The second problem I see with the argument is the assumption that you'll lose nothing if you believe in God but he doesn't exist. Assuming you accept that the Bible accurately represents what Yahweh wants of us (which most Christians do), there are plenty of rules in that book. Granted, many Christians have found ways to rationalize their way out of following a good deal of them (no more dietary regulations, people can work on the Sabbath, many seem to disregard Jesus's lecture about rich people and heaven being compared to camels getting through the eye of a needle, etc.), but there are still quite a few Biblical rules that people do follow. Probably two of the most relevant right now are attitudes toward homosexuals, and attitudes toward stem cell research. The former keeps a large number of people from leading happy lives, while the latter is preventing research with the potential to greatly reduce suffering in the world. One could argue that these are finite costs, compared to the infinite cost and reward of heaven and hell, but they are still costs, nonetheless.

However, the biggest problem with Pascal's wager must be that it leaves out many other possibities. This becomes clear if you imagine the argument with Allah instead of the Christian God. The argument would then seem to indicate that you should be a Muslim. Obviously, they can't both be right. The problem is in that first statement, that either God exists or he doesn't. It's not a simple either/or choice. There are many, many gods to choose from - three versions of Yahweh (Jewish, Christian, & Muslim - not to mention all the sects of those three), Vishnu, the Bahá'í God, Krishna, the Sikh God, Ahura Mazda, Anu, Ra, Odin, Quetzalcoatl, Gukumatz, or Zeus, to name just a few of the deities people have worshipped in the past, or continue to worship in the present (and as an aside, there are many traditions, like Buddhism which don't concentrate on deities).

Also left out are the possibilities of how a god will reward or punish belief and disbelief. The Christian conception of God will reward faith and punish doubt, but with all the possibilities of gods, the other deities may have different ideas. It's conceivable that a god would reward honest inquiry, and punish blind faith, favoring the process over the end result.

Even though Pascal's wager may appear clever at first blush, it's unlikely to convince people who have given much thought to the question of the existence of a deity.

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Aug 22 | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Going into the grocery store this past Friday, a lady standing by the door handed me this (click for higher res):

This is similar to the tract I blogged about before, which I found in some Harry Potter and Golden Compass books (on another occasion, I found a tract in The God Delusion), but apparently, it's a newer, "better" version.

I was half tempted to start a discussion with the lady, but I was in a hurry to pick up a few things and then get home for my daughter's birthday party. Obviously, my daughter takes precedence over street corner debates, so I just chuckled to myself, put the tract in my pocket, and contented myself with knowing I'd be able to blog about it. There's not really much to say about the tract itself, though. It's pretty much the same old thing that's come from Comfort's organization before.

This incident did get me thinking, though. There needs to be some type of quick, easy handout to give to these people, as a kind of reciprocal gift to the tracts they're handing out. I found this, but that's a full brochure. It's not the type of thing I'd carry around in my back pocket, just in case I run into that pushy evangelical. There needs to be something business card sized, short and clear to get them thinking, without being obnoxious or mocking.

As an aside, I'd always given Ray Comfort the benefit of the doubt, assuming he was sincere, but just ignorant of science (and a few other things). I just found an entry on another blog that isn't quite so charitable.

Posted by Jeff on Tuesday, Aug 12 | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

I recently wrote an entry about a phenomenon I'd noticed - "that the vast, vast majority of dubious politically related e-mails I've received are from the right side of the spectrum." I went on to point out that, "In fact, I can't recall a single chain e-mail I've received personally that has denigrated Republicans, social conservatives, or the religious right. But I've received plenty that criticize or demonize their opponents, almost always by either stretching the truth or by outright fabrication."

Well, I've finally received a dubious left wing e-mail. It contained a PowerPoint attachment titled The Dangers of Plastic Bags, which uses some questionable "facts." I converted that to a .pdf, which can be downloaded through the link below:
The Dangers of Plastic Bags (pdf - 1.52 MB).

I'm busy this week with trying to make a new page for my main site, so I won't devote a lot of effort into debunking the claims in that presentation, at least not yet. Hopefully I'll have a chance to follow up on this in the future. Instead, I'll link to a rebuttal from an admittedly biased source, the Plastics Industry Trade Association. Again, this is a .pdf:
Progressive Bag Alliance - Top 10 Myths About Plastic Grocery Bags (pdf - 45.6 kB)

I agree with the general sentiment of the e-mail forward. Plastic bags last a long time without breaking down, are hazardous to wildlife, and it seems that they're being found in just about every habitat on Earth. It would be much better for the environment if we reduced the amount of plastic bags we used. Just buying a couple things from the store? Carry them out without a bag. Wanna be a real tree hugger? Take a reuseable canvas bag. But it does your cause no good try to further your agenda through misinformation. People will think you're a liar, or at best unreliable, and doubt the rest of the information you're providing.

Okay, so for the five years I've been living in Texas (I'm not going to try to remember farther back than that), I've received a grand total of 1 dubious left wing e-mail, and more dubious right wing e-mails than I care to count. I'd sure like to see the totals get reduced to zero for both sides of the political spectrum.

Posted by Jeff on Wednesday, Aug 6 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I wrote an entry a while ago, about finding some religious inserts in Lyra's Oxford, a short book written by Phillip Pullman as a kind of mini sequel to the His Dark Materials trilogy, as well as a few other children's books. Just recently, on the advice of several people (including Eric of the New Minority blog), I finally decided to purchase The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins' book on religion. (I'm already most of the way through it, and hope to put up a review some time within the next couple months. In short, I agree with most, though not all, of what Dawkins has written.) Just about the time I was halfway through the book, a little card fell out into my lap:

The card was printed by the same organization, Living Waters Ministries, headed by the same person, Ray Comfort, as the cards I found in Lyra's Oxford and the other books I mentioned in that entry (man, that took some restraint on my part not to use a different noun to describe Comfort). Given Dawkins' subject material, I wasn't nearly as surprised this time as when I found the inserts in the children's books, and this insert isn't nearly as disengenious. Still, it seems we have a misguided busybody at our local bookstore. Plus, it's always a bit unpleasant to be reminded of the inventor of the argumentum ad bananum.

Posted by Jeff on Tuesday, Jul 8 | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

I've been neglecting the main part of my website a little too long, but I've finally made an update. I got another factoid e-mail in my inbox that was just too ripe to pass up, so I now have Factoids Debunked & Verified, Part III. This was one of the worst factoid e-mails I've ever received. Usually, there are at least some germs of truth. This one seems to be fabricated through and through.

Updated 2008-06-30 - corrected the link to go to the proper page.

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Jun 27 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I've stated several times that my goal for this blog is to make at least one good substantive post per week, or to at least make an update to the regular part of this website. Well, I've spent my lunch breaks this week typing up a response to two comments left on one of my older blog entries, Problems With Day-Age Interpretation of Genesis. Basically, I expanded on the original essay with a few more issues. My main problem with a day-age interpretation is that it's still not consistent with the actual history of the universe and our planet. But I pretty much didn't address that in my response, to concentrate on two issues that I thought were most troubling even ignoring actual history - what does the wording in the second day even mean? And how could plants have survived without the sun and without pollinators? If that's the type of thing that interests you, you may want to go check it out.

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Jun 13 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This is a story that's already made its way around the skeptical neighborhoods of the blogosphere, but it definitely bears repeating for anybody that hasn't heard it yet. Last Friday, the Texas State Board of Education approved the new English Language Arts and Reading curriculum standards.

According to the news release put out by the Texas Education Agency,

A less repetitive, more grade-level specific set of English Language Arts and Reading curriculum standards will go into use in Texas classrooms in the fall of 2009 after having been approved by the State Board of Education May 23 on a 9-6 vote.

The process of revising the 1997 standards began in 2005. Hundreds of teachers, numerous experts, national facilitators, and State Board of Education members worked on many drafts of the document over that time.

The standards ultimately approved by the board represent a blending of a document crafted by teacher work groups, with the help of facilitators from StandardsWork, and a version drafted by a coalition of English teachers. Many of the same teachers worked on both documents.

Other board expressed strong concerns about being asked to approve a draft document that emerged on the final day of deliberations. Consequently, the board agreed to go through the document page by page, spending several hours looking at the latest revisions.

After working two and a half years on curriculum standards, I can imagine that board members would have "strong concerns" over a document that they'd had less than a day to review. There's an article in the Dallas Morning News that lists more details of how that document was released:

"I find it's really wild that we can work for three years on a project and then the board is so qualified they can pull it out of their hat overnight," said board member Pat Hardy, a Fort Worth Republican who, like other board members, received the substituted document when it was slipped under her hotel door less than an hour before their meeting was set to convene Friday morning.

The article also discusses how the "seveal hours" were spent reviewing the new document.

After first saying he would not give board members time to go over the new document during the meeting, Chairman Don McLeroy, a Republican from College Station, eventually relented, allowing a quick run through of the new document with an explanation of the changes.

But the squabbling did not end there.

"Mr. Chair you're going so fast ... you're moving so fast we can't find it in the other document," Berlanga said, shortly after the page-by-page explanation began.

After more complaints, McLeroy declared that he would continue at the fast pace.

"The ruling is you're being dilatory in dragging this out," McLeroy said.

The Houston Chronicle also has an article on what happened, with an opening paragraph that sums up the situation quite nicely.

A three-year effort to rewrite English language arts and reading standards for the state's public schools came down to a last minute cut-and-paste job Friday.

The way the Board of Education handled this was completely improper. Don McLeroy, the head of the Board of Education (who also happens to be a creationist, and a dentist, with virtually no qualifications for heading that board) should resign, and if he doesn't do so voluntarily, should be removed by the governor.

And don't forget that the science standards are the next in line to be reviewed. If the board can be so underhanded on a topic as uncontroversial as English, I fear just what stunts they're going to pull when it comes to subjects like biology and geology.

The best write up I've seen of this in the blogosphere comes from Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy Blog

Posted by Jeff on Wednesday, May 28 | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

I was with a group of people yesterday, and one of them brought up the recent news of the U.S. listing polar bears as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act, due to their expected decline as global warming melts the arctic sea ice they depend upon for survival. And of course, this got the conversation going on global warming. Out of the six of us, one guy thought that scientists just didn't know what the hell was going on with the climate, that there wasn't any real consensus on global warming at all, and that even if global warming were real, which he doubted, polar bears would find a way to survive, anyway. Another guy seemed more open to the idea that global warming could be happening, and could be human caused, but wasn't entirely convinced. I tried my best to defend the science, while the other three people stayed pretty quiet on the subject (although from a previous conversation, I think that one of them at least accepts that global warming is happening). Later on, when I told another guy about this conversation, he seemed to think that the current global warming might just be a natual cycle, and that it's not human caused. So, out of 7 people, I was the only one to strongly accept that current global warming is human caused.

Now, I'll admit I'm no expert on global climate. Not only am I not involved with the field at all, but I haven't really studied it in depth on a lay level, either, like I have other fields such as evolution. So, I guess I need to ask myself, how can I go on accepting that humans are causing global warming, and that it is a major problem?

First, I'll defer to the experts. I realize this isn't exactly a sound logical approach - after all, evidence is evidence no matter who discovers it. But, in the same way that I'll take my doctor's advice on what effects different medicines and procedures have, I'll put a fair amount of weight on the statements of the people who devote their careers to studying climate.

Continue reading "Global Warming - It's Real, And We're Causing It" »

Posted by Jeff on Friday, May 16 | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

I have an essay on my main website (actually, a copy of an e-mail exchange between me and some friends), in which I argue for the existence of a soul. At the time, I'd given it a lot of thought, but hadn't done much actual research. My basic argument was that we're not just automatons - we experience things. Since "experience" isn't a property of matter, our experience must come from something immaterial - a soul.

Well, I've done a little more research into these things since I wrote that. Unsurprisingly, I've discovered that other people have already thought along these lines (that's one of the humbling things I've learned from the Internet - no matter how deep or profound of an idea I think I've come up with, it's almost inevitably been written about by someone else before me, sometimes thousands of years ago). What I was calling "experience" is more formally known as "qualia," and there's a whole Philosophy of Mind dealing with this issue.

One of my original assumptions was that experience couldn't be a property of plain matter. One could arm chair philosophize about this all they wanted, but that gets you nowhere. The best thing to do is to look for evidence that may or may not support this. Unfortunately, given the subjective nature of experience, it's a very difficult topic to find data on. However, since this is a discussion on souls, and the classical understanding of souls is that they are our true identity, and would influence our personalities, we could instead look for evidence dealing with what controls our personality. A very informative website, Ebon Musings, has an essay titled Ghost in the Machine dealing with this very issue. It lists a good deal of evidence explaining how our actions and emotions are controlled by our brains, and how physical changes to the brain can affect us. One of the examples he discusses, and probably the most famous in these types of discussions, is a man by the name of Phineas Gage. Gage was a foreman in charge of blasting for the railroad. In 1848, he was involved in an accident, where an explosion sent a tamping iron through his head, destroying a part of his brain in the process. He survived the incident, but had a completely different personality afterwards.

The fact that it is our physical brains that control our personality is not definitive proof against a soul. It's still possible that to experience qualia, we need an immaterial soul. However, with that line of reasoning, the function of the soul is greatly reduced. It's basically just an observer, along for the ride. And if that were true, what exactly would existence be like after death? Would a soul retain memories? Would it even have a personality?

I don't want to admit it, because the emotional side of me still really wants to reunite with dead loved ones, and to be able to still watch over my daughter after I die, but it really does seem most likely that we don't have souls, that our physical brains really are the true centers of what we would consider "self."

This raises some interesting questions. Where exactly does this awareness come from? Is there any way to know what else has this awareness? Barring solipsism, we can be pretty sure that other humans experience qualia, because we can easily communicate with them. Other animals, too, seem to share this trait. If this awareness is an emergent property of matter, and we know that it occurs in our brains, it seems only natural to assume that it would occur in the brains of other animals. But, are brains the only complex structures that can produce this property? The less we can interact with something, the less we can tell what it might be experiencing. Do plants experience emotions, but we have no way of telling because they can't talk to us? What about the sun? It appears to have some pretty complex reactions going on inside it. Could those reactions be generating some type of experience? Does it even take complexity? Could a rock have a very limited sense of awareness, but with no sensory organs, and no way to communicate with us, we just wouldn't have a way to tell?

And with as specialized as regions of our brains seem to be, how does our consciousness get manifested in a coherent way, incorporating all the thoughts and inputs from different brain regions? Is our consciousness really that coherent, or could it even possibly be that the region of the brain that incorporates input from all other parts is the true center of our "self," and that the other regions of our brain might even have their own sense of awareness? Or, not trying to sound too pantheistic, could this awareness not require actual physical contact (because in reality, no two atoms are ever truly touching, anyway), and be some type of heirarchical phenomenon? Could ant colonies be "super consciousnesses," or could there even be a super consciousness for the entire universe? That last concept seems a bit too outlandish and I really do doubt it, and even common sense would seem to indicate that it's absurd, but knowing how bad of a guide common sense is to the mysteries of the universe (such as quantum mechanics), this still remains an intriguing remote possibility.

In the end, even if we don't have souls, this universe of ours truly is a wondrous place. I'm glad, however it comes about, that I get to experience it.

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Apr 25 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I previously covered this very briefly in a previous blog entry, but I wanted to give it its own entry. The topic I wanted to cover is the difference between your run of the mill creationist and a big name creationist, and why the big name creationists piss me off so much.

Continue reading "Run of the Mill vs. Big Name Creationists" »

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Apr 18 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've written about the Creation Museum a few times before. Well, one of my friends recently took a trip to Cincinatti, and he and his girlfriend thought it would be good for a laugh to kill an afternoon at the "museum." He's posted his review. While he thought the whole thing was pretty humorous, he did have this to say:

Overall, it was fun, but still left me sad with life. Aside from the religously-attired and the mullet-equipped individuals, there were families there, reading the museum's claims to their children as if it were fact. I hope these kids don't want to be scientists when they grow up, because they're off to one hell of a bad start before they even get into public school.

Very true. I feel bad for the kids that get indoctrinated into believing this stuff.

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Apr 18 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I recently wrote a an entry about the upcoming movie, Expelled, and how biologist blogger PZ Myers was kicked out of the line to a screening, while they let Richard Dawkins right in. Well, I still haven't gotten around to writing anything more detailed about the movie, but the NCSE is working on a site, Expelled Exposed, aiming to refute many of the inaccuracies in the film (that's a polite way of saying lies). They currently only have links to reviews of the movie, but on April 15th, their full site, with all of their original work, should be available.

Update: It's April 15th, and the full site is now online.

Posted by Jeff on Monday, Apr 14 | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

I have a goal of making at least one post per week. It's late Friday afternoon, I just finished up work, and I haven't posted anything yet this week. Yeah, there are issues I could blog about right now, but honestly, I'm feeling pretty lazy. I'm really just looking forward to going home and spending some time with my family, and not sitting here writing a blog entry. But, a couple weeks ago when I wrote that e-mail about evolution, I did update an essay from my Religious Essays section. And since it was on my mind, this week I made a few more (very small) changes to some of the other essays in that section, and updated them all. So, if you're interested, you can go read them.

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Apr 11 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It's that time again. The latest NSF report on Science and Engineering Indicators 2008 has been released. I've made previous entries for the 2004 and 2006 versions of the report. While Americans' scientific literacy did improve somewhat for most questions over the 2006 report, the long term trends are relatively constant, and the overall literacy is still depressingly low.

Continue reading "Science & Engineering Indicators 2008" »

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Apr 4 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

There's a new movie coming out called "Expelled," that maybe I'll get aruond to blogging about in more detail later (or maybe not). Its about the supposed close mindedness of the scientific community concerning Intelligent Design, how ID advocates have been unfairly discriminated against because of their views (I'm sure anyone reading this can guess how I feel about those two things), and supposedly even tries to link evolution to the Holocaust (actually, that last one does piss me off - it's an insult to all the people that suffered and died in that tragedy to use their memory for such a dishonest political purpose. Have they no shame?). Anyway, the biologist, blogger, and outspoken critic of ID/creationism, PZ Myers was interviewed for the movie (under false pretenses), and recently tried to attend one of the screenings. There was an online registration you had to complete before going, which he did. Well apparently, the producers had left specific instructions not to let Myers in, he was recognized him while he waiting in line, and was told to leave. Just imagine - a movie all about supposed suppression of free expression, asking a person they'd interviewed, to leave so that he couldn't see what they had to say or how he was being represented in their film. Oh, the irony. But that's not even the worst part. Myers was there with a few friends and family, one of whom was very notorious, who the security didn't recognize and was allowed to enter. Who, you ask. Well, go read Pharyngula to find out.

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Mar 21 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I know I've written about Ray Comfort several times before (here, here, and here), and for a blog with as little output as mine, that represents a good percentage of my entries, but I swear I don't purposely go looking for Comfort's antics. However, I recently read a comment on Pharyngula about Comfort, that seemed so outlandish, I had to verify it for myself. And sure enough, it was true. Here's the post in question, for anyone that ones to see the full entry (warning - the comments section will draw you in like a train wreck; you want to look away, but can't, because you want to see what's going to come up next). Anyway, here's the relevant excerpt, where Comfort's discussing his upcoming book, Evolution A Fairy Tale for Grownups:

I have never claimed to be an authority on the subject of evolution, but I have quoted authorities. Lots of them. The publication is filled with quotes from the mouths of evolution experts who admit that they have nothing. They have no empirical evidence for the theory.

No doubt you will accuse me of "quote mining" (for those who don't know what that is, it's the practice of taking a quote--often out of its context, and using it in a way that was never intended by the author). However, every gold nugget is legitimately mined out of its context. No one seriously values the earth that encases the gold. So, when I uncover an evolutionary expert quietly admitting that he has no evidence to back up his theory, I don’t see any value in the soil of his surrounding words. I merely extract what I believe is of value for those who want to discover the truth about the theory of evolution.

I'm guessing that most of my family, friends and possibly a few other visitors that read this blog, probably don't follow the creationism/science "debate" as much as I do, and so may not have seen many examples of quote mining. Since Comfort's book hasn't even been released, yet, I obviously haven't had a chance to read the quotes he's talking about (and in all honesty, I doubt I'll ever read his book at all, given what I've seen of his previous output), but I've been following this debate for long enough now to have an idea of the way creationists distort people's original meanings when they quote them.

Continue reading "Ray Comfort: Quote Miner Extraordinaire" »

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Feb 29 | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

It's Friday afternoon, I'm running out of time to meet my post per week goal, and I just don't have that much motivation, today. So, I'll just briefly discuss a topic that's been on a few other blogs, recently, the new online bookstore, Abunga.com. It was discussed recently on Pharyngula (it even got a follow-up entry), and in an aritcle in the Knoxville News. From their home page, their logo is, "Empowering Decency as your Family Friendly Bookstore. Basically, they "empower decency" by only carrying books that they deem appropriate. Hell, I'll just quote from their site to explain what they do:

Abunga provides three levels of content filtering:

• Internal Filter – We remove broad classifications of illicit materials by the information classifications set by the publisher. Currently, over 65,000 books are eliminated from our available inventory to protect your family.
• Individual Customer Block - On any search, any Abunga customer member can click the block button and that particular book will never show up as an offering on their account.
• Community Block – Abunga records your blocks and if a number of customers block the same product, Abunga will remove it from their offering.

Now, Abunga's perfectly within their rights to run a bookstore this way. I just think it's remarkably silly. As PZ Myers said in his first blog entry on the subject, "This makes no sense to me. There are a lot of books that I deplore, and the way I cope with them is that I don't buy them. I don't go to the manager and tell them that no one else should be allowed to buy them."
In some of the responses I've seen to people defending Abunga, they've brought up the, "but what about the children" defense. It's still silly. We're not talking about a brick and mortar bookstore, here, where a kid could just walk up and start thumbing through An Illustrated History of Pornography. It's an online store. The only way a book is going to be bought is if someone of legal age with a credit card orders it. Who's really being protected, here? And seriously, if you're that worried about your kid ordering illicit material from an online store, what in the hell are you doing letting them on the internet without any oversight?

There is at least one redeeming quality to the company - they donate 5% of every purchase to a charity that the customer chooses (from a list of pre-approved charities).

One last thing I want to point out, if you go visit their page, at least at the time I'm writing this, in the top left corner there's a little picture of a book with one of those "no smoking" type lines through it, right next to the words "Empowering Decency." In fact, I've copied it, and put it at the top of this entry. I think it's a little funny that the first logo you see on a bookstore is a symbol for "no books allowed."

So sure, Abunga has every right to run a bookstore this way, and their customers have every right to shop there. I also have every right to call them a bunch of close minded ignoramuses, and take my business to a company that's a little more open minded, and will let me decide what books I want or don't want to read.

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Jan 25 | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Earlier this week, at the bookstore, I decided to have a look to see if they had Lyra's Oxford, a short book written by Phillip Pullman as a kind of mini sequel to the His Dark Materials trilogy. I'd already looked the book up on Amazon, and saw that it had a few extras included in it, such as a map of Oxford in Lyra's world, a postcard written by Mary Malone, and a few other things. So, when I saw the card board insert pictured below, at first I thought it was just another of those extras. However, on closer inspection, reading the back, I saw that it wasn't part of the book at all, but a tract produced by the evangelical, creationist organization, Living Waters Ministries.

Click on image for larger version, including back of insert - opens in new window

Continue reading "Golden Compass - A Surprise at the Bookstore" »

Posted by Jeff on Thursday, Jan 3 | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)

I've been very late in blogging about this - the story broke a couple weeks ago. Chris Comer, the director of science curriculum for the Texas Education Agency resigned. There's still a fair amount of controversy surrounding this. Many are quick to jump to the conclusion, which is based on Comer's side of the story, that her resignation was forced because of her support for evolution. In particular, she forwarded on an e-mail announcing a talk by Barbara Forrest, author of "Inside Creationism's Trojan Horse," and a key witness in the Dover trial, which prompted an e-mail from Lizzette Reynolds calling for her to be fired:

This is highly inappropriate. I believe this is an offense that calls for termination or, at the very least, reassignment of responsibilities. This is something that the State Board, the Governor's Office and members of the Legislature would be extremely upset to see because it assumes this is a subject that the agency supports.

Well, I would hope the agency supports sound science teaching, but this e-mail wasn't an official TEA statement, so I'll move on. It was very soon after this that Comer was forced to resign, and the memo recommending her termination included the FYI e-mail as one of its reasons. So, it seems that her support of science was a big reason for her forced recommendation, but the only reason I'm holding out is because of the list of other reasons given in that memo. Comer and others called those other reasons trumped up charges, which they might very well be, but call me naive, I just really want to give people the benefit of the doubt, so I'm not going to assume that the people at the TEA are that malicious.

So, I'll hold off judgement on why Comer was fired, but another statement from the memo does damn the school board:

Ms. Comer's e-mail implies endorsement of the speaker and implies that TEA endorses the speaker's position on a subject on which the agency must remain neutral.

Must remain neutral?! Looks like Reynolds' statement wasn't so far off from what the TEA board thought as a whole. But it's all ludicrous. Isn't the TEA's whole raison d'etre to provide quality education to students? How can remaining neutral on the issue of science vs. pseudoscience be fulfilling that mission? What if Comer had forwarded an e-mail about a lecturer addressing issues of holocaust deniers or HIV denialists - is the TEA to remain neutral on pseudohistory and pseudomedicine as well?

Given that the current chairman of the Texas State Board of Education, Don McLeroy, is a creationist (who doubts anthropogenic global climate change, to boot), and in the past has openly advocated Intelligent Design and old school creationism in the classroom (heck, you don't even need to look at his opponents - just go visit McLeroy's own site to see the type of craziness he believes in), and considering that school science standards are coming up for review in 2008, it makes Comer's resignation all the more fishy. I think everyone in this state needs to keep a close eye on how things play out in the coming months.

Much more information on this whole affair can be found at the website of the National Center for Science Education.

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Dec 14 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Back in May, I wrote an entry, Creation Museum/Creationist Rule of Thumb with the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, to coincide with the opening of the new Creation Museum, operated by an organization known as Answers in Genesis (AiG). Since the "museum" hadn't opened yet, I couldn't very well criticize the museum itself, so I instead picked a page from AiG's website, The Second Law of Thermodynamics: Answers to Critics, and criticized it, instead. I also used that entry to introduce a rule of thumb of mine: Anytime somebody tries to use the Second Law of Thermodynamics to refute evolution, you should realize you're dealing with somebody who doesn't understand science or who is a flat-out liar. If you're actually trying to learn something, you should save yourself the time and quit paying any attention to them, as you can't really trust anything they have to say about science.

Anyway, now that the museum's been open for a few months, people have gone to visit it, and it turns out to be just as bad as everybody expected. Just recently, the sci-fi writer and blogger, John Scalzi, paid the museum a visit, and posted his review on his blog (if the term, "horseshit," offends you, you may not want to follow that link). It's a fairly good review, but the part that makes it the best one I've seen of the museum so far (and admittedly, I haven't really gone looking for them), is the flickr set of 101 photos from the museum. It's not just Scalzi's opinion - you can see for yourself the idiocy on display.

To give you a taste of the review, here are a couple excerpts:

Let me say this much: I have to admit admiration for the pure balls-out, high-octane creationism that’s on offer here. Not for the Creation Museum that mamby-pamby weak sauce known as “Intelligent Design,” which tries to slip God by as some random designer, who just sort of got the ball rolling by accident. Screw that, pal: The Creation Museum’s God is hands on! He made every one of those animals from the damn mud and he did it no earlier than 4004 BC, or thereabouts. It’s all there in the book, son, all you have to do is look...

But seriously, the ability to just come out and put on a placard that the Jurassic era is temporally contiguous with the Fifth Dynasty of the Old Kingdom of Egypt — well, there’s a word for that, and that word is chutzpah. Because, look, that’s something you really have to sell if you want anyone to buy it. It’s one thing to say to people that God directly created the dinosaurs and that they lived in the Garden of Eden. It’s another thing to suggest they lived long enough to harass the Minoans, and do it with a straight face. It’s horseshit, pure and simple, but that’s not to suggest I can’t admire the hucksterism.

I suppose I should add one more excerpt, to make it clear that it's the stupidity of AiG he's criticizing, and not Christianity in general:

To be clear, the “horseshit” I’ve been speaking of is not Christianity, it’s creationism, which to my mind is a teleological quirk substantially unrelated to the grace one can achieve through Jesus Christ...There are lots of Christians who clearly don’t need to twist their brain like a pretzel to get around the idea that the universe is billions of years old and that we’ve evolved from earlier forms.

Anyway, I guess this entire entry was just a drawn out way to put a link to Scalzi's review. Go read it, and especially visit the flickr set, to see just how bad the Creation Museum really is.

Note - this entry was slightly modified from the original version, to include the third excerpt.

Posted by Jeff on Wednesday, Nov 14 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've written about this a couple times before (actually, re-reading that second one, I still think it's pretty good and would recommend it to people who haven't read it, yet), and I've seen it written about in places far more popular than my website, but people still seem to be as gullible as ever.

I don't personally receive many hoax e-mails myself, anymore. I think I've sent enough people links to Snopes, that they've either started checking their e-mails themselves, or gotten so fed up with me that that they took me off their distribution lists. But, my wife still gets quite a few, and working at a spot where she's not allowed onto the Web to check, she'll forward the e-mails to me and ask me to check them for her.

Well, she sent me one the other day about a supposed Amber Alert, after having received quite a few from the same person. When it comes to missing children, it really seems so easy to just forward it on, and you almost feel bad being skeptical about it, but it still doesn't do anybody any good to forward on a hoax. Actually, I'd bet that if you're constantly getting fake Amber Alerts, you're not going to pay as much attention when a real one finally comes your way. The thing that really caught my eye about this one, was that it was completely missing a date, and most of the information (physical description, last location seen, etc) that you'd expect to see in such an alert. So, I was nearly positive it was a hoax before even looking it up, but I still checked just to be safe.

Well, that got me to thinking - it really is pretty easy to spot most e-mail hoaxes before you even try to verify them. So, I thought I'd post a quick list of the tip-offs I use to spot hoax e-mails.

1. It's an e-mail Okay, that might sound a little sarcastic, but really - be skeptical of any information you get from an e-mail, especially one that's been forwarded. Much more often than not, they're hoaxes or lies.
2. No date This is probably the biggest tip-off for anything supposedly coming from an official organization (virus warnings, amber alerts, product recalls, etc.), but applies to news and current events, as well. Even if the message might have been true originally, chain e-mails have a way of long outlasting their useful life, and may be describing something from 10 years ago or more.
3. No references If a person on the street you'd never met before told you an outlandish story that they'd heard from their friend, who'd heard it from a friend, who'd heard it from a friend, would you believe them? So why would you believe it when it comes from an e-mail? Look for the original source of the story.
4. Too good to be true Usually, when a story sounds too good to be true, it is.
5. Politically related A lot of the time, people let their emotions get in the way of their good sense. If a story villifies someone's political enemies, they seem to shut off their critical thinking skills entirely (well, I guess a lot of people don't really have all that good of critical thinking skills to begin with, but that's a topic for another time).
6. Religiously related These e-mails could go in the Too good to be true or Politically related categories, but I get so many of them that they deserve their own mention. Just because an e-mail has the word "God," don't give it a free pass. Treat it just as skeptically as you would any other e-mail.
7. Send this email to everyone in your address book If an e-mail has a phrase like this near the end, you can almost be positive that it's a hoax.
8. Factoids Any time an e-mail consists of a long list of trivia, you can be just about sure that most of those facts are wrong, or at the very least misleading. I've even got an article on my main website where I researched every single claim in one of those types of e-mails.
9. It's an e-mail Yes, this bears repeating. Most chain e-mails floating around the Internet are hoaxes or lies - be very skeptical of any information you get via e-mail.

There still are some amazing true stories out there, and every once in a while I'll be surprised, when I go to Snopes (and don't forget - Snopes can be wrong, too) and learn that a story from an e-mail actually did happen. Still, with the ratio of junk to good, you're best off being skeptical of every e-mail until you've verified it.

More info: TruthOrFiction.com's "Signs of Common eRumors"

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Nov 9 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, today's Columbus Day, so I thought I'd write a little entry about it. (Actually, I'd planned on writing it a year ago for Columbus Day, but didn't get around to it in time.)

Here's what prompted me to write this - my family and I were talking, and my wife and daughter were rubbing it in how they both got Columbus Day off when I didn't. Well, me being the type of father I am, I asked my daughter what Columbus did that's so special that he's got a day named after him. She responded with the typical proving the world was round. Ugh. She was just repeating what her teacher had taught her, so she didn't do anything wrong, but how does this story continue to get taught?

I won't bother to give too much detail here - just go to the Wikipedia entry on Columbus, and read the Navigational Plans section. Basically, by Columbus's time, most people knew the world was round. Eratosthenes had even calculated the diameter to within a few percent 1700 years prior. The reason why Columbus had such a hard time securing funding, was because he believed the Earth was a whole lot smaller than most other people thought. He thought the Earth was around 15,700 miles in circumference, when in reality it's around 25,000 miles. Nobody knew about the Americas at the time. They figured that in theory, if you sailed west from Europe, you would eventually get to Asia, but that the trip would be so long, there'd be know way to take enough supplies on the ship to get you there. In fact, Columbus was lucky the Americas were there, or he wouldn't have had enough supplies.

added 2007-10-10 After reading through this entry again, I realized I forgot to mention something. The answer I was expecting my daughter to give was that Columbus discovered America. I was all prepared to tell her about the Vikings and others that made it to the Americas before Columbus, and the fact that Columbus never realized he'd discovered a new continent, even though it was his voyage that really did spark the major wave of European exploration of the new world. But for her to bring up the old myth of proving the world was round, it really took me by surprise.

Posted by Jeff on Monday, Oct 8 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Now, I don't use this blog much simply to post links to other sites or other people's blog entries. I mean, this blog isn't popular enough that a link from me would really increase traffic to another site at all, so I usually only link to other sites when I have something to add. But this topic strikes a chord with me, so I thought I'd include this link.

For years, I've been saying that rejecting evolution was about like rejecting that the Earth was round. I thought that doubting a roughly spherical earth was such a ludicrous position, that it would only be the craziest of the crazies that thought that way. Surely, in the United States, where everybody gets an education, any reasonably normal person would know the shape of our planet. Well apparently, my definition of "reasonably normal" doesn't include talk show hosts:

Sherri Shepherd, co-host of The View, stated that she isn't sure if the Earth is round or flat.

You can read more about it here.

To be fair, after watching the clip, from the way she's talking I get the feeling that she may have made a poorly worded statement just for the argument, and that she didn't really believe it, but she refused to back down from her point because she didn't want to admit that she was wrong. I'll admit, I've sort of done that before, but never with an arugment so stupid as that, and never one that was very far from my actual position. So, even if this woman's not dumb as a post or comletely ignorant, she was willing to say she wasn't sure what shape the earth was during a debate and not be completely embarrassed by that. So, even giving her the benefit of the doubt, she obviously doesn't have that much respect for knowledge.

I never watch The View, so I don't know what their show's all about. Maybe it's kind of like an upscale Howard Stern - have a moderator bring in a few crazies just for entertainment value. If that's the case, they certainly do a good job at it. I just hope that it's not a respected talk show, that people listen to for informed debate. On the other hand, I haven't heard much from the other hostesses, so I don't know if they all have views as weird as that Shepherd lady - maybe she's just the comic relief or the designated punching bag, to make the other three look good.

Anyway, I'm shocked a person with that mindset could get a job that pays that well, spouting off that type of nonsense, too. Where do I sign up?

added 2007-09-21: I just talked this over with a guy I know. He thinks I'm being too generous - he thinks she's just a moron. But, we both agreed, that even if she was doing it to defend a previous argument, unless it's some philosophical point about solipsism or a Matrix type universe, any argument that requires you to admit that you don't know if the earth is round or flat is a really, really bad argument.

Posted by Jeff on Wednesday, Sep 19 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Foreword & Disclaimer Added 2007-09-14

Okay, in the feedback I've gotten to this (from a blog comment, e-mail, and a especially some real, live conversations), people seem to have a problem with the word, "atheist." Atheist has different shades of meaning depending on who you ask, and in the more popular usage, perhaps I'd be better described as agnostic. In the comments to this entry, I brought up the term, "freethinker," and I'm beginning to think that I might like that even better, since, as I point out in another comment, I think the thought processes we use to arrive at our conclusions are as important as the conclusions themselves. And by stressing the process, and not always the final destination, it allows you to find more commonality with people who came to different conclusions. My point is, if you're reading this entry, please don't get hung up on the term, "atheist." Please read what my actual position is.

I'd also add, that if you read this, and find it very objectionable, and also happen to know where I work, don't take it as a reflection of the others where I work or the company. As far as I know, I'm the only non-believer. Plus, every other week when we go out to eat as a group, somebody always says a prayer (never me, of course).

Doing some maintenance on my blog recently, I noticed that I had 99 entries so far. That makes this entry 100. So, for my hundredth entry, I wanted to make it something kind of special. So, I have an announcement:

I'm an atheist.

Okay, so it's not an earth shattering announcement, but it's something I've been wanting to get off my chest for a while now. It probably comes as no surprise to many people - indeed, my family and many of my friends already know. And anybody that reads this blog and the essays on my main website would have seen how I'd been moving away from Christianity (such as this essay, where I'd finally decided that the Bible isn't divinely inspired). And, I've been leaving comments on other blogs discussing my atheism, even though I wasn't open about it on my own blog. I'd even already received some e-mail from people accusing me of being an atheist long before I actually became one, simply because I accepted evolution.

Okay, first things first, let me get a few things out of the way (by quoting and paraphrasing from other essays I've written). I didn't become an atheist just because I didn't like going to church Sunday mornings, or because I didn't want to have to follow the rules anymore. I don't "hate God" (it's a little hard to hate an entity you don't believe in). I read the Bible. I studied science. I read up on philosophy. I became an atheist because that's the way I think the universe really is. And don't confuse atheism with Postmodernism or Nihilism. I still think there's an objective reality. I still worry about how to be a good person. I just no longer see a god as being part of that.

Second, don't confuse atheism with certainty - I'm not absolutely one-hundred percent certain about anything. However, I'm about as sure that the Earth is a globe that orbits the Sun as I am that the Bible was written by people, and that a God as presented in the Bible doesn't exist. I'm not as certain that no type of divine being exists at all. I don't see an absolute reason why there would have to be one, and I haven't seen any good positive evidence for such a being, so the default position is to doubt its existence. But, I still can't be positive that a god/gods doesn't exist. So, I leave open the slight possibility that gods could possibly exist, but I base my worldview on the idea that they probably don't.

Continue reading "My Hundredth Blog Entry & An Announcement" »

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Sep 7 | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Sorry for not making a post last week, but I was on vacation with my family (who am I apologizing to? I don't have any regular readers). So, here's a short post to make up for not having one last week, and I'll try to write up something else before the end of the week.

Actually, this is just quick follow up to the post about Massai Barefoot Technology Shoes. I mentioned in the beginning of that post that it was in a pharmacy where I originally saw those shoes. To be exact, the pharmacy was Harvest Drug & Gift. I'd already intended contacting them about the shoes before visiting their website, but once I did actually visit the site this past Monday, I saw just how prominently they were displaying MBT shoes. So, I sat myself right down and wrote them an e-mail, copied below.

I recently visited your store and saw the MBT shoes you had on display. They piqued my interest, so I did a little research about them. Admittedly, I'm neither a doctor nor a scientist, but from the information I could find, I did have some concerns regarding these shoes. I would assume that as doctors, your primary concern is the well being of your patients, so I thought you might be interested in what I found.

I have a detailed write-up of what I found on my personal website at:
[link - I included the actual url in the letter, but it's so long it screws up the formatting on this page.]

Here are the major points:

• MBT shoes do show promise, but the studies to date have only been preliminary - more follow up studies are needed to confirm their efficacy.
• There haven't been enough clinical studies done with these shoes to identify possible negative side effects.
• Anecdotal evidence suggests that there are serious side effects possible from long term use of these shoes.
• One study which examined relieving knee pain in patients with knee osteoarthritis did not find a big difference between MBT shoes and "conventional" New Balance sneakers.

In light of the anecdotal evidence suggesting negative side effects, the lack of clinical studies addressing the issue, and considering that at least one study found significantly less expensive shoes accomplishing nearly the same results, I would suggest being very cautious in recommending these shoes to your customers, and possibly even recommending that they only use the shoes under the guidance of a physician or physical therapist (as was suggested by one therapist quoted in one of the articles I found). Perhaps you already do counsel your customers in such a way, or do have some warning signs posted that I missed, in which case this e-mail is completely unnecessary. Or perhaps you know of some studies which do address side effects, in which case I'd be grateful if you could pass them on to me so that I could update the article on my website.

Sincerely,
Jeff Lewis

If I hear anything back from the pharmacy, I'll post it on this blog. But seeing as how it's been a couple days already without even an acknowledgement of receipt, I'm not holding my breath. Maybe I'll try snail mail if I don't hear back from them within a couple weeks.

Added 2009-07-08 I realize that I mentioned my original MBT post at the beginning of this entry, but I just want to be sure that readers don't miss it. It contains a much more in depth look at the shoes, and has generated a good discussion in the comments section::
A Skeptical Look at Masai Barefoot Technology Shoes

Posted by Jeff on Wednesday, Aug 8 | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)

I was at the drug store the other day waiting on a prescription, when I noticed people trying on some funny shapped shoes that had curved soles. So, I walked over to the display and took a closer look. They were called MBT shoes, which stands for Masai Barefoot Technology, and are made by the company, Swiss Masai. They had hand-out brochures, so I took one to read while I was waiting. (Note that I will refer to the company as both MBT and Swiss Masai in this essay, as it appears that the company does the same on their website.)

For some of the research for this entry, I used MBT's website. It's an annoying, flash laden site that doesn't let you just sit and read about the technology, without having some java script decide you've spent enough time on that section and then brings up something else. Also, I couldn't find some of the statements on the website that first caught my eye on that brochure - so if you go to visit the site looking for them, you may not find them, either.

Anyway, there are a couple issues I want to discuss in this entry - briefly, whether or not these shoes have anything to do with "barefoot technology," and then in more depth, whether or not these shoes might actually have some therepeutic value.

I realize now as I'm getting ready to post this entry, that it's grown longer than I'd originally anticipated, so I'll get right to the point up front, before addressing the details. MBT shoes do show promise for treating certain conditions. However, there is anecdotal evidence that they can cause significant negative side effects. Additionally, there are not enough clinical studies addressing their efficacy or possible side effects.

Continue reading "A Skeptical Look at Masai Barefoot Technology Shoes" »

Posted by Jeff on Thursday, Jul 26 | Permalink | Comments (54) | TrackBacks (0)

On the ride in to work this morning, I was listening to NPR as normal, and they were interviewing a couple people about NASA funding, Greg Easterbrook and NASA Administrator, Michael Griffin. Michael Griffin made a few comments that were so stupid, I had a hard time believing I'd caught his name right. After all, it's always a little tough to catch who they're interviewing when you pick up in mid stream, and when you're driving and have to pay attention to the other cars on the road more than the radio, but I checked the NPR website, and sure enough, I got it right.

Now the interview was about a lot more than just global warming, but it was one of the topics they brought up. Here's part of the transcript from NPR's website, with the interviewr's questions in bold, and Griffin's responses following.

It has been mentioned that NASA is not spending as much money as it could to study climate change — global warming — from space. Are you concerned about global warming?

I'm aware that global warming exists. I understand that the bulk of scientific evidence accumulated supports the claim that we've had about a one degree centigrade rise in temperature over the last century to within an accuracy of 20 percent. I'm also aware of recent findings that appear to have nailed down — pretty well nailed down the conclusion that much of that is manmade. Whether that is a longterm concern or not, I can't say.

So, he acknowledges that this is a real phenomenon, that people are responsible for it, and that it's already had a measurable effect. But then in the next breath says he's not sure if it's a longterm concern. Whaaaa?

Do you have any doubt that this is a problem that mankind has to wrestle with?

I have no doubt that … a trend of global warming exists. I am not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with. To assume that it is a problem is to assume that the state of Earth's climate today is the optimal climate, the best climate that we could have or ever have had and that we need to take steps to make sure that it doesn't change. First of all, I don't think it's within the power of human beings to assure that the climate does not change, as millions of years of history have shown. And second of all, I guess I would ask which human beings — where and when — are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now is the best climate for all other human beings. I think that's a rather arrogant position for people to take.

Whoah, I'm dizzy from that change in direction. In that first section I quoted, he admits that the current climate change is caused by people, and then here, one question later, he says we don't have the power to keep the climate from changing. And then he has the gall to say that people that want to stop human induced climate change are being arrogant! That's like someone going around and intentionally starting forest fires, and then when the firefighters show up, he calls them arrogant for assuming that potential future residents might not want trees in their back yard.

Look - it's not like the current situation is a natural phenomenon that we want to stop. Noone's suggesting something like stopping plate tectonics because we happen to like geography the way it is. The fact of the matter is that this is a human caused phenomenon, and the rates of change are going to be much higher than most times in that "millions of years of history" Griffin referred to. Sure, life on this planet will continue, and humanity will most likely make it through, too, but unless we start taking some drastic action now, it's going to be one hell of a ride before things settle out.

This was good timing. When I checked Pharyngula today, there was an entry about a new site devoted to answering climate skeptics. Go check it out to see some responses to common arguments. And don't forget to check out RealClimate, either, which has much more actual data.

Posted by Jeff on Thursday, May 31 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

There's now a follow-up entry to this post, written after the "museum" actually opened. If you want to read John Scalzi's reaction from his visit, or see his flickr set of photos from the museum, go to that entry.

Well, the grand opening of the Creation Museum is scheduled for this coming Monday, May 28th. I've blogged about this once before, lamenting the fact that $27 million was being wasted on this shrine to ignorance, but I figured that with the opening day approaching, it was worth making another post on this topic (and maybe get included in the upcoming Creation Museum Carnival, update - it's here).

There are two problems I had with this entry - the first being that this is a museum that I've never visited and that hasn't even opened yet. Ken Ham, the president of Answers in Genesis (AiG), the organization running the museum, even wrote a short entry on his blog the other day, Name-calling against Creation Museum, whining about this very issue. That isn't really all that big of a deal, though. Since this museum is being run by AiG, I'm assumimg that everything in the museum is going to be consistent with the AiG website. I wouldn't imagine that there are any new, ground breaking arguments being unveiled in this museum that AiG hasn't already put up on their website. The real problem, is that AiG is such a reposity of stupidity, it's hard to narrow down your focus to one manageable topic.

I'd been planning on writing a blog entry about a certain topic for a while now, so I might as well use this opportunity to do it, and that is to state a simple rule of thumb for dealing with creationists. Anytime somebody tries to use the Second Law of Thermodynamics to refute evolution, you should realize you're dealing with somebody who doesn't understand science or who is a liar. If it's a website, you should save yourself the time, and just leave and go look somewhere else. This may seem like a bit of an ad hominem attack, and maybe it is a bit, but life is short. You shouldn't waste your time dealing with idiots and liars. Maybe, just maybe, a website that uses the Second Law of Thermodynamics this way will have some thought provoking arguments, but it almost certainly won't be because the person running the website understood the science - they got lucky (in the same way as a million monkeys at typewriters would eventually reproduce Shakespeare), or they parroted it from somewhere else. But in any case, especially under the liar scenario, you'd have to really be careful to figure out just what you could trust from that source, and you'd be much better going somewhere more reputable.

And guess what, AiG has a page all about it, The Second Law of Thermodynamics: Answers to Critics. It's a little hard to figure out if it's based on ignorance or dishonesty. I'd guess a little bit of both, considering the author, Jonathan Safarti Sarfati, was competent enough to get a PhD. But the rule of thumb still applies - stay way from AiG if you're looking for good information.

This paragraph added 2007-05-24 After reading this, I'd imagine some people would think this rule of thumb could be even easier - anytime you're dealing with a creationist at all, you should realize you're dealing with someone who doesn't understand science or who is a liar. And, that could be true for the most part, but it's possible that creationists could be people that understand science, but haven't studied evolution/biology in particular, and don't actually know all the evidence in support of evolution, or that they have such strong faith, the evidence wouldn't matter to them, anyway. This misuse of the Second Law has nothing to do with fossil evidence, genetic evidence, or faith - it's just a complete misapplication of a scientific theory that should be obvious. So, that's why I still use this rule of thumb - it's not arguing over the interpretation of evidence (which still puts creationists on shaky ground), it's getting things wrong right from first principles. Creationists that use the Second Law of Thermodynamics argument really are the bottom of the barrel.

Continue reading "Creation Museum/Creationist Rule of Thumb with the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics" »

Posted by Jeff on Wednesday, May 23 | Permalink | Comments (14) | TrackBacks (0)

Ray Comfort was one of the reasons that originally inspired me to start this blog. A guy at a flea market gave my wife and I a Comfort CD, and when we listened to it, the arguments in it were so horrible, I just had to vent somewhere. So, I wrote one of my first blog entries. Well, over the past couple weeks, Comfort's been making waves in the blogosphere, so I thought I'd add my two cents.

To give a quick background - Ray Comfort and his (hmm, sidekick is too demeaning, but I don't think he's an equal partner, so maybe...) protege, Kirk Cameron, of Living Waters Ministries (and also The Way of the Master website), challenged the originators of the Blasphemy Challenge, the Rational Response Squad, to a debate, wherein, according to the Christian News Wire, Comfort and Cameron "offered to prove God's existence, absolutely, scientifically, without mentioning the Bible or faith." I was hoping it was going to be better than the argumentum ad bananum, but unfortunately, it wasn't (in either the humurous sense or the actually making a good argument sense).

The televised, edited version of the debate should air tonight on ABC's Nightline, but there's already a clip on YouTube. Admittedly, the clip was put together by people sympathetic to the Rational Response Squad, and not Comfort and Cameron, but after listening to Comfort on that CD I mentioned above, I doubt he had any better arguments than what that video shows. Anyway, the televised version will be aired tonight, so if Comfort & Cameron did put forth any better arguments, they'll be made public soon.

Basically, the "scientific" argument Comfort put forth in the debate boils down to this - paintings must have painters, buildings must have builders, etc, etc; therefore creation must have a creator, i.e. God. That's just a horrible analogy. For one thing, all he's doing is listing things with known intelligent agents directly responsible for them, then listing those intelligent agents, and then somehow makes the jump that the universe must therefore have been created by an intelligent agent. The problem is, not everything we see was directly created by an intelligent agent. Many things, even ordered structures such as snowflakes and other crystals, or structures that appear intentional, such as the Old Man of the Mountain, are certainly the direct result of natural, unintelligent processes. So from that aspect of it - no, not everything must have an intelligent creator.

Another problem with Comfort's analogy, is that even though the same word, "create," can be used for all the things he's describing, it really is describing a different concept in the human vs. divine cases. All the human examples he gave were the result of physical entities merely rearranging materials that they already have to work with from their environment, while the divine creation of the universe was a supernatural agent creating all matter out of nothing. It's a big jump to go from the first to the second, since they aren't really the same thing.

Thirdly, even if Comfort's analogy could somehow be taken as proof of a god, it does nothing to prove the existence of the God of the Bible - it could just as easily be applied to Zeus. And finally, by Comfort's reasoning of everything requiring a creator, you're left with the question of where God came from in the first place. (I know, I know - it's not turtles all the way down; God is infinite, and doesn't need a creator; or else, He created time, so it's meaningless to ask what came before Him.)

Anyway, whether you believe in God or not, Comfort & Cameron's argument was far from a proof, and certainly not a scientific proof, for any god, let alone a proof for the Christian God. Don't use their silly, simplistic arguments to try to convince anybody of anything.

Posted by Jeff on Wednesday, May 9 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, I'm late in getting to this like just about all my other blog posts, but... About a month ago, I made an entry about a then upcoming Intelligent Design event in Dallas. Well, Zachary Moore of the blog, Goosing the Antithesis, attended the event and wrote a 6 part series about it. Apparently, it was as bad as I would have thought it to be. Here are the links to the entries:

Darwin vs. Design: Lee Strobel
Darwin vs. Design: Jay Richards
Darwin vs. Design: Stephen Meyer
Darwin vs. Design: Michael Behe
Darwin vs. Design: Questions and Answers
Darwin vs. Design: Final Thoughts

Jason Rosenhouse of EvolutionBlog attended the Darwin vs. Design conference in Knoxville, which was apparently very similar. He gives his take on the event in a two part series:

Darwin and Design in Knoxville, Part One
Darwin and Design in Knoxville, Part Two

Posted by Jeff on Tuesday, May 8 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The other day I wrote that my daughter no longer believes in the Easter Bunny, and this week she finally got around to admitting that Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy aren't real, either. I guess I'll have to keep an eye on her the next few days to make sure she doesn't go on a murderous rampage.

Man, after reading that and a few other of Jack Chick's tracts, it's scary to think there's somebody so demented to come up with that stuff, and even scarier to think of the number of people who buy his products.

Posted by Jeff on Friday, May 4 | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Reading a recent entry on Pharyngula, I came across a quote from Kirk Cameron that struck me (not because it was Kirk Cameron saying it, but because the topic is a typical view), "Atheism has become very popular in universities--where it's taught that we evolved from animals and that there are no moral absolutes. So we shouldn't be surprised when there are school shootings." Well, the school shooting part's a complete non-sequitir. But I do want to take a look at the moral absolute parts in a bit more detail. There seems to be a sense among many Christians in this country that morals are absolute, and moral relativism is a bad, bad thing.

Now, I'll admit right up front that philosophy isn't my area of expertise, so perhaps my Wikipedia informed definitions of moral absolutism and moral relativism is leading me astray, but it certainly seems to me that most of our morals are relative, and not absolute. Even for Christians, when you look at the 10 commandments, the ones that deal with how to treat other people can all be looked at on a relative basis.

Honor your father and your mother.

You shall not kill [sometimes translated as murder].

You shall not commit adultery.

You shall not steal.

You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor's.

I guess Christians could still argue that certain actions besides those listed above are inherently good or bad, but the Christian basis for good or bad a lot of times simply boils down to "God said so," but this doesn't say that the actions themselves are inherently good or bad. For a popular example, look at eating kosher foods. Before Jesus, it was apparently immoral to eat non-Kosher foods, but now, because of the New Covenant, non-Kosher foods (like shrimp) are on the menu. So, there was nothing inherent in the action that was moral or immoral, just whether or not God said it was okay. To insist on moral relativism absolutism, when it seems that even God himself can change his mind, seems like a pretty strong stance to take.

A lot of Christians in this country today argue that morals are absolute, but it seems to me that the morality of an action really must be determined in context, and that most people usually do judge actions that way. To insist on complete moral absolutism seems a bit silly.

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Apr 27 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I was a little late in hearing about this, and then it took me a little while to blog about it, but I recently learned that there's going to be an Intelligent Design event not too far from me at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. Not too surprisingly, the anthropology, geology, and biology departments at the university weren't too happy about it, and all sent letters to the school administrators expressing their dismay. The administrators responded with their own statement, part of which said, "Although SMU makes its facilities available as a community service, and in support of the free marketplace of ideas, providing facilities for those programs does not imply SMU's endorsement of the presenters' views."

For now, I'll just take that statement at face value, and assume that SMU would also lend its facilities to the KKK, holocaust deniers, or flat-earthers. After all, it's in the interest of the "free marketplace of ideas," right? What I'd rather focus on in this entry is the response by William Dembski. For anyone who's followed Intelligent Design (ID) at all, Dembski's name should be very familiar - he's one of the main ID "theorists," a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, and has become infamous for his use of information theory to try to support intelligent design.

Part of Dembski's response was, "Doesn’t the 'M' in SMU refer to 'Methodist' and aren't Methodists believers in God? Is SMU's anthropology department committed to hiring anti-God faculty?" Okay, I know that for most, ID really is religiously motivated, and I've heard that proponents had been slipping more recently, but isn't the standard line still supposed to be that ID is a purely scientific concept (oops, I mean, "theory"), and that the identity/intentions of "the designer" are irrelevant to detecting design. I mean, haven't people (like Dembski himself) even said that the designer could be sufficiently advanced aliens? Nice to see that they're finally dropping the facade and just coming right out and saying that it's religious. I'd be willing to bet, though, that all those believers in theistic evolution would be a little upset at being called "anti-God."

Anyway, I'm tempted to actually go see this conference, just to see what it's like (in a slowing down to see a car wreck kind of way), but two hours away is just a little too far to go. Plus the fact that they're actually charging for tickets, and there's no way I'd ever give any money to support these hucksters.

Addendum: I forgot to mention this originally, but I just wanted to make it clear. Even if you ignore that ID is religiously motivated and just look at it scientifically, it still has no real evidence to back it up, and shouldn't be taken seriously. Just go browse Talk Origins for some of the evidence for evolution, or better yet, just go read some science magazines.

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Apr 6 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

On my main site, I've written twice before about people trying to use the Bible as a justification to ban gay marriage. I just came across a supposed open letter that covers it much more humorously than I ever could. The letter is addressed to Dr. Laura Schlessinger, in response to some statements she made on her radio program. To help make it easier to check the Biblical passages, I've made them links to the appropriate chapter in the New Internation Version.

(Apparently, I've been living in a cave. When I looked this up on Snopes to try to figure out who was the original author so I could either link to them or credit them, I found that this letter's been circulating since at least 2000. But whether or not this letter is real or was ever sent, the content is still good.)

Dear Dr. Laura:

Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God’s Law. I have learned a great deal from your show, and try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination…End of debate.

I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some other elements of God’s Laws and how to follow them.

1. Leviticus 25:44 states that I may possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighbouring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can’t I own Canadians?

2. I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?

3. I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanliness - Lev.15: 19-24. The problem is how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.

4. When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord - Lev.1:9. The problem is my neighbours. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?

5. I have a neighbour who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself, or should I ask the police to do it?

6. A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination - Lev. 11:10, it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don’t agree. Can you settle this? Are there ‘degrees’ of abomination?

7. Lev. 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle-room here?

8. Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev. 19:27. How should they die?

9. I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?

10. My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev.19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them? Lev.24:10-16. Couldn’t we just burn them to death at a private family affair, like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev. 20:14)

I know you have studied these things extensively and thus enjoy considerable expertise in such matters, so I am confident you can help.

Thank you again for reminding us that God’s word is eternal and unchanging.

Your adoring fan,
unknown

Posted by Jeff on Wednesday, Jan 31 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I recently had an e-mail correspondence with a creationist, whch I mentioned in my latest update, which led me to post parts of it as a new essay on my main site, Confidence in Historical Knowledge. There were other parts of that e-mail correspondence that I thought were pretty good, but a little more controversial than my normal fare for my main site, and a little bit off topic from the rest of that essay, so I decided to post them here on my blog, with a few changes from the original e-mail.

One issue that's common is to conflate multiple topics, which really aren't all that related, such as the big bang and evolution of life. This is especially common among people who reject the science on religious grounds, since religious creation stories commonly account for the creation of the universe and everything in it (and since I live in the predominately Christian U.S., this usually means people looking at the creation story of Genesis). But these really are separate concepts in science. Look at it this way - the big bang occured somewhere around 14 billion years ago. Our species has been around for around 100,000 to 200,000 years. To put that in perspective (using the 200,000 year figure), humans have been around for 1.43e-5 the time since the big bang. (Note that I'm referring to when the big bang occurred, and not calling it the beginning of the universe. Big bang theory describes what happened after that moment, not how everything got there in the first place. Who knows, the universe could be thousands of times older than the time since the big bang, existing in some state that we don't know about.) The United States is 200 years old, so the U.S. has been around for 1e-3 the time of humans. In other words, the origin of humanity and the big bang are so far removed, that trying to equate the two is even worse (by 2 orders of magnitude) than trying to equate the origin of the U.S. with the origin of humanity. They should be treated as separate events.

Another point I want to address is directed at the Christians who reject science about the past because it conflicts with their interpretation of the Bible. I've even received an e-mail in response to other essays I've posted on my website, stating, "There is only one historical account of origins events and that is the Bible which claims that the only eye-witness to the events is God."

I will address this in two ways. First, the Bible is not the only proposed historical account of origins. Most religions have their own explanations. Just look at the appropriate Wikipedia page - there are dozens just on there.

The second thing I want to say on this, is even if you accept the Bible as being true, it is only one source of evidence, and still open to interpretation. The most famous example of this is Copernican astronomy, and in particular the conflict between the Catholic church and Galileo. Based on their observations, scientists put the sun at the center of the universe, and said that the earth orbitted it. The church, using numerous Biblical passages as support, said that the Earth was the center of the universe. (Neither party was right, but science was on its way to getting at the right answer, and was at least more accurate than the church.) Nearly all Christians today would say that the Catholic church was wrong, and were misinterpreting the Bible. That may be the case, but it shows the problem in relying on only one source of evidence.

As two other examples, look to the germ theory of disease, and slavery in the American south. The germ theory of disease - that disease are caused by infectious agents, was initially rejected by many, on the grounds that diseases were punishments sent by God, and of course they could find the passages to back up that claim. (See this post from The Panda's Thumb.)

During and prior to the U.S. Civil War, many southerners used the Bible as a justification for slavery. I won't say much on this, other than to direct readers to this page at ReligiousTolerance.org, which quotes several prominent figures from that era, and has further links to the relevant scripture passages.

I bring up these examples not to show that the Bible is definitely wrong, but to show that people's interpretations of the Bible can be wrong. So, even if you do consider the Bible to be accurate, should you reject scientific theories based on your interpretation of the Bible, or should you incorporate scientific knowledge, to aid you in your interpretation of the Bible? What if Genesis was meant to be read allegorically, or figuratively?

Posted by Jeff on Friday, Dec 8 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)