Email Duel!

Just letting you know I've thrown down the gauntlet to an email I received. Chances are, you'll be seeing the results somewhere down the line.

Okay, I admit it, it's Dave Mabus. He decided to go directly to my personal email instead of comment spam, so it's a bit more personal, and I've been wanting him to throw down. I wouldn't be surprised if he chickens out of answering some simple questions:

1) If he's saying Nostradamus predicted a swine flu epidemic, why wasn't he sending emails about it years ago? The real answer, of course, is that it's a postdiction made after swine flu hit the media blitz.

2) How can us skeptics have "disconfirmation bias" in regards to the evidence for ID/Creationism if they can't even figure out what sort of evidence they're looking for?

Dogfight #5: PZ Got Mail From This Nut

PZ gets more entertaining mail than I do. It's a long one, and I'm feeling masochistic enough to take on each little bit. I'm feeling generous, too, so I'm giving this person much more than a troll deserves. Maybe I'll pick up a troll in the process. Here comes the fold for those at the front page:

It is easy to prove to yourself that God is real. .the evidence is all around you. Here are 50 simple proofs:
Whilst agreeing that random patterns occur naturally by chance, DNA however, consists of code, which requires a designer.

How exactly do they know a designer is required, and not merely sufficient? We've got computer analogs that can generate DNA-like behavior. Also, who's more reliant on chance? Non-random natural selection is a very powerful force in evolution. Randomness just provides more raw material to work with.

How do you explain the paranormal, such as people witnessing positive or negative sightings, like ghosts or angels? I saw a ghost with a friend of mine - I am not a liar, an attention seeker. Neither was I overtired when this happened.

Oh, gee, we explain the "paranormal" all the time. We've done it so much that paranormalists are running out of ideas.
More points: 1: Even if we lack an explanation, that isn't proof. It's your job to prove it's paranormal. 2: How exactly are these proof of gods?

Try praying. What good is it when a mind is set to coincidence & disbelief regarding the positive outcome?

Ah, yes. You demand that we lower the standards of proof and act like it's a bad thing we're open-minded towards other explanations. We've done one better than what you've proposed and looked at larger prayer studies. It doesn't work.

The law of cause & effect - in order to have an effect, there has to be a cause. Everything is caused by something.

Turtles all the way down, huh? We can go all the way back to early moments of the Big Bang and say, "We don't know yet, but here are a few ideas we can try to test." We're honest that way. Creationists like you tend very heavily to label any hole in your knowledge "God". Just like your ancestors did with lightning. And worse, you strike me as exactly the type who would label something impossible and then claim your deity isn't subject to that rule.

Anyway, it may not be comfortable with the idea, but I'm not one to say that acausal events are impossible by fiat. Be really frustrating to prove it, though.

Mindless nothing cannot be responsible for complex something.

Another declaration by fiat. Hubris, much? I find the hypocrisy especially delicious in this case since it's the Creationists who typically advocate complex entities arising from nothingness. Evolution is about somethings giving rise to occasionally slightly more complex other things. The process just builds up over time.

Science can only be the detector of certain things. You cannot scientifically detect emotion, memory, thoughts etc., though scientifically we must.. These things which do not consist of matter are beyond the detection of science.

Oh, funny. More baseless assertion. Apparently this troll is utterly unaware of the field of neurology, and the nature of science. We can detect emotion, memory, and thoughts by watching behavior, for one. It's not perfect, but we can do it, and we do it every day, though a little sloppier than a scientist would in an experiment. Science isn't just a collection of scanners, despite what Hollywood will tell you.

Also, if you want to convince me that all those things are non-physical, you'll have to be the one to provide evidence.

Evolution has never been proved, which is why we call it the 'theory of evolution'. It's a fairy tale for grown ups!

Well, looks like this has likely moved into open dishonesty. Do they really think playing around with the English language instead of the evidence will make them look better? No wonder Creationism has become synonymous with dishonesty.

Atheism is a faith in that which has not been proved. The disbelievers have not witnessed anything to not believe in, whereas the believers believe because they have witnessed. There is no 'good news' to preach in atheism.

Ah, yes, the hubris of claiming personal infallibility in witnessing. Of course, atheism is about not having a belief in deities. Not witnessing deities at work is what atheism predicts. No deities means nothing to witness. Creationists, however, have to get pretty creative to explain contradicting experiences from other religions. We've already got explanations: People are fallible.

How much of the atheist's faith relies on anger with God as opposed to genuine disbelief in God?

Classic subjectivist newage (rhymes with sewage) hippieshit psychobabble. That's popular with the corporate masters at Hollywood. Does this person ever leave the basement?

Why do many atheists shake their fists & spend so much time ranting & raving about something they don't believe in? If they are no more than a fizzled out battery at the end of the day, then why don't they spend their lives partying, or getting a hobby?! Why don't they leave this 'God nonsense' alone?

Because vile people like you use religion as a tool to inflict evil on the world. Would you have us tolerate evil and spend our time on a selfish hobby instead? Heck, we're often victims ourselves. We've got both selfish and altruistic reasons to stand against you.

Knowledge gained by science is one of the best tools we have for making the world a better place and more specifically for countering your vileness.

What created God? What came first, the chicken or the egg? I am not going to deny the existence of the chicken or the egg, merely because I don't understand or know what came first. I don't care - they both exist!

Hey, you're the one positing the god hypothesis. It's your job to flesh it out and prove it.

Improbability is not the same as impossibility. You only have to look at life itself for that backup of proof.

Yup. I believe something was said about that in "Climbing Mount Improbable." Of course, you're the only one here declaring anything utterly impossible. Woos just love that word.

How could the complexity of human life possibly evolve on its own accord out of mindless cells?

Introduce random mutation. Natural selection non-randomly picks out those that do the stuff that helps them reproduce more. Rinse and repeat for illions of years.

How could the complexity of the human mind possibly evolve on its own accord out of mindless cells? Where does our consciousness come from?

Duh. Interactions of nerve cells. If you want to show it's something spooky, you'll have to prove it.

What/who knew that our hunger & thirst had to be catered for by the food & drink which we're supplied with?

Unconscious tendencies covered that before the sensations of hunger and thirst existed. Sensory input from your innards when they're running low and a triggered foraging instinct are a good combo. Creatures with a system that triggered appropriate behavior were more likely to survive. It's pretty simple.

Most of us are born with the five senses to detect our surroundings, which we're provided with.

Way more than five senses. And yeah, being able to detect the world around us is an advantage that'd be selected for. What's so weird about that?

What/who knew that had Earth been set nearer to the sun, we would burn up?

Hey, if it wasn't Earth, we'd be on some other planet Omicron Persei VIII, wondering much the same deal. You're working backwards.

What/who knew that had Earth been set any further from the sun, we would freeze up?

Hey, if it wasn't Earth, we'd be on some other planet Omicron Persei VIII, wondering much the same deal. You're working backwards.

What/who knew that had Earth been built larger or smaller, its atmosphere would be one where it would not be possible for us to breathe?

Because we evolved to live on a planet with this gravity. If the planet was bigger or smaller within tolerances for abiogenesis, the entirely different critters born/hatched/spawned there would have appropriate methods to breathe.

What/who knew that we require the oxygen of plants, just as plants require the carbon dioxide of us?

No one knew. It's just a matter of adapting and forming a symbiotic relationship.

The concept that life came about through sheer chance is as absurd & improbable as a tornado blowing through a junk yard, consequently assembling a Boeing 747!

Exactly why I find the whole deity concept silly. Life formed through non-random natural selection acting on replicators with some random mutations. Try reading up on it. It's called evolution, and its stochastic process involves far less randomness than spontaneous generation of supernatural entities.

We are willing to believe in physically unseen waves that exist through the air, operating physical forces & appliances to work, yet not supernatural God forces being responsible for the same.

More word games. "Supernatural" is meaningless. We can see and predict the effects of the invisible. Those invisible waves act according to solid rules and behave very reliably. There's no rhyme or reason behind allegedly supernatural happenings. That's why religious predictions are all over the board and no one is consistently accurate. Prove me wrong by winning a JREF-esque challenge.

Matter cannot organise itself. An uneaten tomato will not progress on its own accord to form a perfect pineapple. It will transform into mould, into disorganisation. The laws of evolution fall flat.

You think mold is disorganized? Mold is a living thing that eats the tomato to decrease its entropy and reproduce. The mold is organizing itself, even if it's not on a level not pleasing to your hubris-filled sense of aesthetics. A tomato turning into a pineapple is the sort of absurdity one would expect from a world filled with the random supernatural effects you describe.

Besides, ever watched crystalline formation? That looks like a share of self-organization to me.

Our 'inventor' of evolution, Mr. Charles Darwin had this to say to Lady Hope when he was almost bedridden for 3 months before he died; "I was a young man with unfathomed ideas. I threw out queries, suggestions. wondering all the time over everything, and to my astonishment the ideas took like wildfire - people made a religion of them." Darwin then asked Lady Hope to speak to neighbours the next day. "What shall I speak about?" She asked. He replied; "Christ Jesus and his salvation. Is that not the best theme?"

1. Lady Hope was lying.
2. Science doesn't care about who came up with the theories. Darwin was no infallible god-king making unquestionable decrees. What matters is the evidence. The universe itself cries out in favor of evolution whenever we look. Your projection of your blind obedience to authority onto us is noted.
3. Darwin is dead, and to me he's just a celebrated footnote in the history of science. He has no practical importance to research, and he's very well outdated since we've refined his theory.

Where do our moral values held within our conscience come from? If the atheist is right, why then would we care about what we did?! If there is no God, then we've no-one to be accountable to.

Except each other. Hurting people makes me feel bad because it means people might hurt me back, or withhold help. Human beings care about each other because we need each other to survive. Altruism is our survival strategy, and it's worked very, very well. Besides, I have the ability to put myself in another person's place, and I wouldn't want to be hurt by me, either.

If man has evolved from an animal, why doesn't he behave like an animal? Yet man is civilised.

Animals are very diverse entities with very diverse behaviors. Civilization is one of those behaviors because it's a very, very effective survival strategy.

'Chance' isn't the cause of something. It just describes what we can't find a reason for.

Yup. Can't really argue with that. We don't know everything, but certain things follow the laws of probability. We just can't seem to get to the bottom of everything to find out why. Some people like you, however, like to pretend that they've already solved it.

Science & logic do not hold all the answers - many people are aware of forces at work which we have no understanding of & no control over.

Exactly. That's why you're so arrogant to think you have answers without evidence. You place yourself above everyone else by doing that.

Look at the date/year on our calender - 2000 years ago since what? Our historical records (other than the Bible) record evidence of Jesus' existence.

Evidence such as?

Many people have died for their faith. Would they be prepared to do this for a lie?!

If they believed the lie, yes. There are atheists out there with the same passion necessary to die for their ideals. Better to die for that, than some concept of personal infallibility at the core of "Faith".

Much of the Bible deals with eyewitness accounts, written only 40 years after Jesus died. When the books in the New Testament were first around, there would have been confusion & anger if the books were not true.

1. Eyewitness accounts rank very low on the scale of evidence.
2. There was confusion and anger. It continues to this very day. Such is the way with any religion.

From as early as 2000 BC, there is archaological evidence to confirm many details we're provided with in the Bible.

Evidence such as?

Not one single Biblical prediction can be shown as false, and the Bible contains hundreds.

Oh, really? You haven't done much reading, have you?

The evidence from liturature & historical studies claim that Biblical statements are reliable details of genuine events.

What historical studies?

From the birth of science through to today, there is no evidence to claim that Christianity & science are in opposition. Many first scientists were Christians; Francis Bacon, Issaac Newton, Robert Boyle, to name a few, along with the many who stand by their work & faith today.

And yet, there are still Christians who claim disease is caused by evil spirits. The science of medicine is in contradiction with this. Not to mention so many other fields of science that Christians typically reject. As for the other scientists, well, it's entirely possible to be a part-time woo and still contribute to science.

Science can explain 'how' something works, but not 'why' something works.

Newage (rhymes with sewage) word games.

Science is constantly recorrecting its findings. Past theories contradict certain beliefs which are held today. Our present 'discoveries' may change again in the future to rediscover how we originally came into existence.

Yup. Because we're fallible, we recognize the need for correction. Somehow, though, I doubt germs will suddenly stop causing disease when we discover evil spirits. We've been wrong before, but science is a process of becoming less wrong as time goes on. The world isn't flat, and it isn't a sphere. That doesn't mean a person who says it's a sphere is exactly as wrong as a Flat Earther.

Evolution describes the way life possibly started, yet doesn't explain what made life start & why. Scientific questions fail to do that. Even if evolution were proved, it would still not disprove God.

1. Evolution is what life does. Abiogenesis takes over, and it's a growing field.
2. For the illionth time: IT'S YOUR JOB TO PROVE GOD! It's not our job to disprove every unicorn, fairy, werewolf, and other miscellaneous supernatural entities.

The two people who discovered Jesus' empty tomb were women. Women were so low on the social scale in first century Palestine, so in order to make the story fit, it would have made far more sense to claim that it were male disciples who had entered the tomb. But it wasn't - we're left with the historical & Biblical truth.

1. It depends on which version of the story you're reading.
2. I'm not one to claim it's a deliberate hoax. Kind of pointless to make this argument to someone who has a hard time believing any detail of the event happened. To me, the whole thing spawns in the way that urban legends spawn about purely fictional events.

Think about Near Death Experiences. It's naive to believe that they all are induced by chemicals or drugs. How do we account for a blind person having this experience, coming back to describe what they had never before seen, a person telling the Doctor that there is a blue paperclip on top of the high cabinet, which they couldn't have otherwise known, an african man being dead in his coffin for 3 days, coming back to life to tell of much the same events which took place as those of many others? We never hear of the witnesses describing "a dream". We're not silly - we know the difference between even the most vivid of dreams to that of reality.

1. Why's it naive? Consciousness itself is induced through electrochemical signals.
2. Show me evidence of these tales, and urban legend chain emails don't count. We don't need to explain events if they never happened.
3. There goes that hubris again, thinking you've got an infallible sense of reality. Stop worshiping yourself and these alleged people. It's embarrassing.

There are many skeptics who didn't believe in Jesus before his crucifixion, and who were opposed to Christianity, yet turned to the Christian faith after the death of Jesus. Just as the many who continue to do so today.

Yeah, and there are many Christians who turn into skeptics. Why should I believe the word of an alleged ex-skeptic without evidence? It's meaningless to talk of conversions of others. Show us the evidence.

Albert Einstein said; "A legitimate conflict between science & religion cannot exist. Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind".

Einstein didn't use conventional definitions for "religion" and "god". Chances are, he'd call you childish and egotistical.

A speaker in Hyde Park who was attacking belief in God, claimed that the world just happened. As he spoke, a soft tomato was thrown at him. "Who threw that?" He said angrily. A cockney from the back of the crowd replied; "No-one threw it - it threw itself!"

More urban legendry combined with straw men. You don't get out much, do you?

It is easier to believe that God created something out of nothing than it is to believe that nothing created something out of nothing.

There's not a lot of difference from what I can see. You'd have to believe that nothing can create God from nothing for the former. I don't see much reason to believe in creation ex nihilo. The way I see it: Somethings came together and interacted to create new somethings, which created more somethings and so on. There's never a nothing involved, except for possibly virtual particles and such. I'll consult my QM friends if it gets down to that.

Stephen Hawkins has admitted; "Science may solve the problem of how the universe began, but it cannot answer the question: why does the universe bother to exist?"

Namedropping without any explanation. I find the latter question meaningless.

We cannot confuse God with man. With God in the equation, all things, including miracles are possible. If God is God, he is Creator of all, inclusive of scientific law. He is Creator of matter & spirit.

Convenient for you to define him as such. Must be nice to prove something by definition, rather than collection of evidence.

If we are the product of evolution - by sheer accident, chance, then we are still evolving. Does it just so happen that we exist here today with everything so finely tuned for our living. as we now have it?

Chance didn't have all that much to do with it, remember? Non-random natural selection, remember? The critters who couldn't make it in this world died off while the ones who had the upper hand flourished.

Could it possibly be that the missing link does not exist?!

Which missing links, where? We don't need a complete record of every critter who had offspring to make inferences. You're asking us to go against common sense and take it on your word that some critters similar to earlier critters just popped into existence.

God has proved himself to us in numerous ways, all around us. The atheist needs to put his glasses on. What more can God possibly do if man has shut his eyes to him?

Right. Declare victory by claiming it's already proven without specifying a single proof or even methods of proof. You've done nothing to show your work, and most of your arguments rely on the assumption that you and the names you drop are perfect.

Jesus Christ is either who he says he is, or he is the biggest con man history has ever known.

It's my current opinion that if anything, Jesus was a typical deluded cult leader who just happened to be successful for the same reasons urban legends are successful memes.

I have no trouble imagining him pulling off an L. Ron Hubbard, though. Humans are fallible and easily fooled. Unlike you, I recognize my shortcomings and put up the safeguards of science. Hubris and blind trust such as yours allows superstitions to perpetuate.

YOU DECIDE!!!

I don't think it takes a genius to know what I've decided. When you feel like coming out of the cookie-cutter mold all the other woos, psychics, alties, IDiots, Scientologists, etcetera, try emailing me something that hasn't been addressed over a century ago.

Egnor Proves There's a God... Sort Of.

"I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: 'O Lord make my enemies ridiculous.' And God granted it." -Voltaire

Lately, Egnor, the brain surgeon, has been demonstrating his ignorance on another issue you'd think he'd have at least a snippet of knowledge about: The brain.

A number of science bloggers have covered this in depth, like PZ. I don't think it'll take much effort for you to find others. He's dipped very far into dualism to the point of being a mirror of grand woomeister Deepak Chopra. I will not be surprised if Egnor winds up taking the title.

Egnor's dualism is standard woo: There's material stuff, and immaterial stuff. The immaterial is walled off from science, material causes can't explain it because he says so for no reason, and the brain is just a 'receiver' to some invisible signal, and damage to it causes results exactly like the much more parsimonious hypothesis that brain damage damages consciousness because the brain is the cause of consciousness. The latter requires no invisible, undetectable stuff.

Neurology is a complicated field, so naturally we don't know everything about it. Lack of knowledge in some areas is no reason to assume that we'll never know, or that our current research methods are futile.

It looks like I made a good move comparing Egnor to Homsar.

My Vocabulary Word For the Day #2

I was looking up an acronym in the Urban Dictionary, and started looking at the recent front page words. I bumped into this:

Epiphanot:

An idea that at first seems like an amazing insight (at least to the conceiver) but later turns out to be pointless, mundane, stupid, or incorrect, and often is the root cause of bad decisions. Mostly occurs under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

Here is a bimutual epiphanot from one of Americas cinematic masterpieces, National Lampoon's "Animal House"...

Larry: Okay. That means that our whole solar system could be, like one tiny atom in the fingernail of some other giant being. (Jennings nods) This is too much! That means one tiny atom in my fingernail could be--

Jennings: Could be one little tiny universe.

Larry: Could I buy some pot from you?

I think I'll be using this word a lot with woos like Michael Egnor.

Dogfight #4: Dr. Michael Egnor

Since PZ's big round number B recently occurred and I couldn't conjure up a poem, guess I'll do another Dogfight for him. Today's target: Dr. Michael Egnor, who, aside from being a Cretinist recently touted by the "Discovery Institute," is the cause of much embarrassment for Orac.

So, without further ado:

---

Learning about biochemistry and learning about molecular biology, I found some aspects of it quite unsatisfying in a sense that there was so much astonishing complexity, so much beauty in the way life worked at the molecular level that I couldn't understand how it came to be.

---

I would suggest you hook up with a biologist, then, and study biology. Chances are, it'd get more beautiful once you did get an understanding of our current level of knowledge.

---

At the time, although I didn't question Darwinism explicitly because I didn't realize how much evidence there was to support questioning Darwinism, I felt that there was something really missing in my understanding of biological complexity. But I didn't think a whole lot about it and went on to practice neurosurgery and do my own research.

---

Evidence such as...?

---

As time went on, I came to seriously question whether just randomness, just random meaningless events, could really generate the kind of beauty and elegance and complexity that's at the core of living things.

---

And already you demonstrate what level of understanding of evolution you have: None whatsoever. Evolution isn't random. It's stochastic: It's a process with random elements, but the end result is still non-random. To use an extreme example, a fast-running deer is much more likely to survive than a paraplegic one. If evolution was random, they'd have about the same chance. Natural selection is non-random. When I was in seventh-grade biology, I understood that simple concept.

Also, what's with 'meaning'? A person might call a hammer meaningless, but it's still quite a useful tool for driving a nail. Should I expect this to be a repeat from an old troll who claimed that he was somehow able to change the dripping of a faucet by 'applying meaning' to it?

---

What troubled me about my attempt to understand where the complexity and the elegance of life came from was a difficulty in seeing how, for example, the genetic code could arise by chance. It seemed to me preposterous to assume that a representation of an informational code, which is really a language, with letters and words and syntax and punctuation, could arise by random events, no matter how many random events, or no matter what kind of selection pressure you offered. We have no experience in nature whatsoever with representational codes or languages except in biology, and the only experience we have in our lives is with such languages that are intelligently designed by people.

---

1. Thought experiments don't prove anything. Just grab a genetic algorithm and run it!

2. Stop drinking from the reification Kool-Aid: We call it a language because that's an easy to grasp analogy.

3. Languages aren't always intelligently designed: They evolve. Someone comes up with new words, expressions, etcetera, often on whims, and if the community finds the innovation useful enough, it survives. If I'm lucky, 'flarschnikit' might survive as a meme.

---

The difficulty was that I didn't realize that a very powerful scientific case can be made that these aspects of living things are not random, and it wasn't until I read the work of Michael Behe or Bill Dembski and Phillip Johnson that I came to see that the qualms that I had, the suspicions that I had, about the adequecy of Darwinism to explain biological complexity had a very sound scientific basis. In fact, in my view, th science that Behe and Dembski and Johnson were talking about was much better science than the Darwinism that I had been taught.

---

Yeah. Behe, the guy who does science so astounding, and so much better than real science, he has to argue that the definition of science must be downgraded to include Astrology.

And Dembski, who argues that the universe is designed because everything is flarschnikity.

---

What struck me as astonishing in looking at the work of Bill Dembski and Phil Johnson and Michael Behe...is that if you look objectively at the genetic code, at much of modern molecular biology, you see a specified complexity that is really in some way the semantics of meaning in, for example, the genetic code, that the gene that codes for an enzyme doesn't itself do what the enzyme does. It doesn't catalyze a reaction. It simply has a meaning that is translated into the enzyme that catalyzes the reaction. How can one generate by random processes, regardless of what kind of selection pressure you have, because all selection pressure has been historically nonintelligent. It gets colder, it gets warmer, a boulder falls on an animal, something happens, but it's not intelligently caused. But such selection pressure, how can that generate meaning? How can that generate a code, a language? And those questions are very good scientific questions. They're the kinds of questions that Darwinists should have asked in the 1950's immediately after the genetic code was revealed. It's the kind of thing that should have stopped Darwinism in its tracks.

---

Now that stupidity's just painful. I imagine it's even moreso for those of you with a better understanding of how those molecules shuffle about. I think we've gone into one of those meaningless marijuana-inspired rants about an undefined 'meaning'.

Somehow, I suspect this quote had a lot of d00000d!s and Maaaaan!s removed before I read it. And this guy's a doctor? No wonder Orac's got that bag on his head. Wonder if this guy's brain surgery comes with a free Q-Ray bracelet or something.

---

Okay, that's about my limit. Think I'm approaching the event horizon of Egnor's brain. Happy B, PZ!

Dogfight #3: Don Erler

Welcome to another Dogfight. It's been a while. I've been trying to get away from the ID front for a while, since I haven't been dissecting as much general woo lately. But this column, emailed to me by my brother, contained a few statements that were so amazingly stupid, my inner masochist dragged me to the "New Post" button.

A large majority of Americans celebrated Christmas -- literally, the Mass of Christ -- yesterday, including Christians whose religious services are not called Mass. Even atheists like Richard Dawkins celebrated the holiday for its secular joys.

Don't know if "small blessing" is appropriate, but I am profoundly glad there's no mention of the alleged "War on Christmas," otherwise I'd be typing for a LOT longer. Skipping ahead of some fluff...

Yet here at the end of one year and the start of another, during days of religious significance for most of us, should we not permit ourselves to reflect upon the "big questions"?

If so, start with the smallest of them: Have you noticed that atheism is suddenly front page and big business?

Sam Harris has had two bestsellers attacking religious belief: The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation. Add those to Dawkins' The God Delusion, Christopher Hitchens' God is Not Great, Daniel Dennett's Breaking the Spell and Frederick Crews' Follies of the Wise, and believers confront an intellectual assault of dramatic proportion.

It's a good thing that atheists can get published, and that more of us have the courage to do so. Thank the FSM for Blogger, WordPress, and so forth. Text often falls short of implications and tone, but he sounds like he's saying atheists speaking up more often and standing up for their (dis)beliefs is a bad thing.

Jeff Randall, the editor at large of London's Telegraph, who describes himself as a weak believer, recently complained about the "extraordinary ... [and] tyrannical minority" of militant secularists who exhibit "hatred against those who adhere to biblical values."

1. I think we can all safely say, even without prior knowledge, that Jeff Randall is an idiot and/or a liar. Since when was publishing more books "militant?" Granted, my brother used that adjective to describe Deepak Chopra recently, with a touch of exaggeration and humorous irony, but I don't think anyone really knows what that word means anymore.

2. What kind of "weak believer" talks about "biblical values?" Which "biblical values?" Slavery? Genocide? Absolute piety? Fashion? What? Shouldn't "weak believer" imply something about near-agnosticism, and some recognition that values are pretty much universal? It's a weird, nebulous term that I can't parse.

3. Where's this "hatred?" To my incomplete knowledge (Got some relevant books for Decemberween, but haven't started reading them yet), there's no hate whatsoever in those books: Just a lot of emphasis that faith is inherently opposed to reason.

There is, of course, at least another side to this story. Many brilliant people remain both scientists and believers. Even Steven Weinberg, who once wrote that the "more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it seems pointless," told me several years ago that he finds plausible something like the "Force" of Star Wars movie legend. So this notorious atheist finds a kind of divine reality to be consistent with his explorations of subatomic particles.

My gut says that someone seriously misinterpreted. In case Weinberg actually does believe in that sort of stuff, I have a feeling Infophile would jump to set him straight.

Of course, someone will feel obligated to point out midochlorians or however they're spelled, so I might as well be the one. Please, no groaning in the comments.

Moreover, as Newsweek reported in its Dec. 18 edition, heavyweight cosmologist Paul Davies thinks that those who study nature closely "proceed on the assumption that there is a coherent scheme to the universe to be uncovered. ... That's also an act of faith."

Can you say "Equivocation?"

Sure, I knew you could.

We work on the assumption that the universe follows consistent rules because, so far, the rules we've uncovered are consistent. Also kind of pointless to map something if it keeps changing.

How about this: We'll continue working on that assumption until someone proves the rules we've uncovered aren't consistent.

Readers who think about the words on this page know that intelligence exists in our world. What accounts for it? And why are the "laws" of nature (isn't a lawgiver required?) mathematical?

1. Intelligence is accounted for by evolution, neurology, and so forth. We don't have a complete picture, but I'm not about to put up a brick wall called "magic" because we don't know everything yet.

2. I think we've established that you can say "equivocation." "Law" as scientists use the term doesn't imply any sort of lawgiver. The rules of the universe are the rules of the universe. So far, we don't see any source. There may be no source.

3. The answer to the last question is "Mu." If the laws were different, math would be different in the same way. The concepts are inseparable. Sounds a lot like another nut I've read about. Just imagine him in a basement giggling and saying "Dude!" and "Maaaaan" between every sentence, and you'll have a good idea of how these people sound to me when I read them.

If, as Weinberg quipped, nature is "pointless," then it is also, as Davies countered recently, "incomprehensible." But scientists who probe its mysteries keep uncovering additional layers of its comprehensibility.

Pointlessness and comprehensibility are separate concepts. Just because Erler can't deal with a pointless universe doesn't mean it's incomprehensible. We'll keep uncovering more knowledge about the universe, but it seems likely we'll eventually bump into that little curse of Gödel's.

And the fortunate faithful believe that they know what ambivalent philosophers and agnostic scientists seek to learn.

If they're so fortunate, I'd like to see them prove it.

See also: AA's take

Dogfight #2: The Homsarmy

Since PZ's getting spammed by the Homsarmy, I might as well get on the battlefield and help out. Not that he needs it. I just feel the need to have some fun, as well as inflict some pain on my brain.

This particular email caught my attention thanks to the sheer thickness of the irony involved.

To: PZ Myers biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris.

Mr Meyers, Godless Atheist

And all of your fraternity of Godless Atheists :

I didn't join a frat in college, but I suppose I'll do.

Have you ever heard of Stephen Hawkins? How about the big bang theory, ever hear about that?

I went to a lecture of his. Had to settle for a live feed in another room, since the first room got sold out within 24 hours of the announcement. The Big Bang's quite nifty, and thus far, apparently quite true.

Do you understand it? Do you understand Physics? What part of "Beginning" don't you quite Grasp?

Yup. As for "beginning," I fail to see what that has to do with anything, especially since the Big Bang is arguably evidence that there is no such thing, time being "wrap-around" like the other 9+ dimensions, last time I checked.

Are you aware of Albert Einstein?

Yup. And according to my coolometer, he registered at 500 megaFonzies.

Are you aware of any acknowledged greater minds in the history of the world than these two Gentlemen?

Define "greater." Then we can get to work on building a greatometer.

Ever heard the Joke about a group of Scientists challenging God because they had created life in a test tube? You God gathers his dust to create another man, and the scientists start gathering their dust. God tells the group of scientists, Whoa. Wait a minute fellows, create your own dust!

No. Doesn't strike me as particularly funny, except for the absurd premises it relies on.

I am always amazed at people like you, you firmly and whole heartedly believe that what we know as the universe, came into being by some big whoops of nothing. That absolutely Nothing had anything to do with creation accept some unlimited number of coincidences, and yet you believe that a belief in an intelligent creator somehow endows total stupidity. May God strike me with the Stupidity of Einstein and Hawkins and lots of it.

I'm not a Creationist. I don't believe in creation ex nihilo. I'm very confident in the Big Bang, and M-theory sounds promising, based on my layman knowledge.

Bring on the National Academy Of Science, all of the Non-believers, and evolutionists with their phoney theories which Darwin manufactured and lied about from the beginning. Talk about Faith! If anyone can accept all of the assumptions and maybes taught by these intellectually deprived Godless people of Science, their faith in an accidental whoops creation surpasses most Christian's faith in God.

Evolution and the Big Bang rely on fewer assumptions that Creationism. Science requires only the assumptions any non-solipcist follows. Creationism involves those plus many others, including non-falsifiable ones. Faith is not involved in science.

100 years ago this year, Albert Einstein published three papers that rocked the world. These papers proved the existence of the atom, introduced the theory of relativity, and described quantum mechanics and all of this at age 26.

I'm told it's 101, Mr. Copy & Paste. And indeed, those papers were quite nifty.

His equations for relativity indicated that the universe was expanding. This bothered him, because if it was expanding, it must have had a beginning and a beginner. Since neither of these appealed to him, Einstein introduced a 'fudge factor' that ensured a 'steady state' universe, one that had no beginning or end.

Stop that, that's silly! The expansion of the universe does not imply, much less require a beginning or a beginner. It implied a singularity. Nothing more.

But in 1929, Edwin Hubble showed that the furthest galaxies were fleeing away from each other, just as the Big Bang model predicted. So in 1931, Einstein embraced what would later be known as the Big Bang theory, saying, "This is the most beautiful and satisfactory explanation of creation to which I have ever listened." He referred to the 'fudge factor' to achieve a steady-state universe as the biggest blunder of his career.

Einstein goofed. At least he later admitted it.

Einstein's theories have been thoroughly proved and verified by experiments and measurements. But there's an even more important implication of Einstein's discovery.

Not only does the universe have a beginning, but time itself, our own dimension of cause and effect, began with the Big Bang.

Time didn't begin with the Big Bang. The Big Bang was an expansion of time and space.

That's right -- time itself does not exist before then. The very line of time begins with that creation event. Matter, energy, time and space were created in an instant by some intelligence existing outside of space and time.

1. That's wrong. "Before" is a meaningless term outside of time. I suppose next, you'll be telling us that the absence of anything north of the north pole proves geocentrism.
2. Non-sequitur. Your "facts" are uncoordinated. Even if time operated as you describe, there's nothing in there that implies, much less proves the existence of an "intelligence."

About this intelligence, Albert Einstein wrote in his book "The World As I See It" that the harmony of natural law "Reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection."

If Einstein said and meant it as you describe, that qualifies as another goof. You won't get me with an argument from authority.

To quote Ann Coulter,---

Cutting you off. She doesn't know anything about evolution or liberalism, or anything she goes on about. If she does, she's one of the world's biggest liars, since she continues to use century-old canards.

The Big Bang theory was totally rejected at first. But those who supported it had predicted that the ignition of the Big Bang would have left behind a 'hot flash' of radiation.

Yup. Strictly speaking, all scientific theories should be tenatively rejected until they get proof. And that's what the Big Bang theorists did: They got evidence. You know, that little thing that evolution has piles and piles of.

If a big black wood stove produces heat that you can feel, then in a similar manner, the Big Bang should produce its own kind of heat that would echo throughout the universe.

Yup. The cosmic microwave background radiation jiggy.

In 1965, without looking for it, two physicists at Bell Labs in New Jersey found it. At first, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson were bothered because, while trying to refine the world's most sensitive radio antenna, they couldn't eliminate a bothersome source of noise.They picked up this noise everywhere they pointed the antenna.

Yup.

At first they thought it was bird droppings. The antenna was so sensitive it could pick up the heat of bird droppings (which certainly are warm when they're brand new) but even after cleaning off the antenna, they still picked up this noise.

This noise had actually been predicted in detail by other astronomers, and after a year of checking and re-checking the data, they arrived at a conclusion: The Big Bang theory really was correct.

And scientists all over the world broke out the champaigne. The really good champaigne.

In an interview, Penzias was asked why there was so much resistance to the Big Bang theory.

He said, "Most physicists would rather attempt to describe the universe in ways which require no explanation. And since science can't *explain* anything - it can only *describe* things - that's perfectly sensible. If you have a universe which has always been there, you don't explain it, right?

"Somebody asks you, "Why are all the secretaries in your company are women?" You can say, 'Well, it's always been that way.' That's a way of not having to explain it. So in the same way, theories which don't require explanation tend to be the ones accepted by science, which is perfectly acceptable and the best way to make science work."

But on the older theory that the universe was eternal, he explains: "It turned out to be so ugly that people dismissed it. What we find - the simplest theory - is a creation out of nothing, the appearance out of nothing of the universe."

He needs to work on his method of expression. There was never a nothing for the universe to come from. Until that radiation was found, a steady state universe seemed parsimonious (even though it wasn't, false cosmological constant and all).

Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

Considering that there's no evidence I'm yet aware of of a "beginning" for time, much less that the Big Bang was this "beginning," I fail to see what this has to do with anything. Especially since God hasn't been established, either.

Penzias and his partner, Robert Wilson, won the Nobel Prize for their discovery of this radiation. The Big Bang theory is now one of the most thoroughly validated theories in all of science.

They deserved it, and that's right: The Big Bang is right up there with evolution.

Remember, Liberal Mythology teaches Darwinism, or Evolution by CHANCE!

You know someone's losing an argument when he makes shit up.

While I admit that I am stupid (less intelligent than Liberals and non-Believers) in my stupidity I choose to believe in an Intelligent Creator,...GOD!

At least he admits it.

In your kitchen cabinet, you probably have a spray bottle with an adjustable nozzle. If you twist the nozzle one way, it sprays a fine mist into the air. You twist the nozzle the other way, it squirts a jet of water in a straight line. You turn that nozzle to the exact position you want so you can wash a mirror, clean up a spill, or whatever.

I was raised by a cup of coffee.

If the universe had expanded a little faster, the matter would have sprayed out into space like fine mist from a water bottle - so fast that a gazillion particles of dust would speed into infinity and never even form a single star.

I'd need to see the math, but that sounds reasonable.

If the universe had expanded just a little slower, the material would have dribbled out like big drops of water, then collapsed back where it came from by the force of gravity.

Also sounds reasonable.

A little too fast, and you get a meaningless spray of fine dust. A little too slow, and the whole universe collapses back into one big black hole.

Get to the point.

The surprising thing is just how narrow the difference is. To strike the perfect balance between too fast and too slow, the force, something that physicists call "the Dark Energy Term" had to be accurate to one part in ten with 120 zeros.

Again, I'd need to see the math, but get to the point. And it'd better not be Texas Sharpshooter.

In their paper "Disturbing Implications of a Cosmological Constant" two atheist scientists from Stanford University stated that the existence of this dark energy term "Would have required a miracle...An external agent, external to space and time, intervened in cosmic history for reasons of its own."

Someone's been dipping into the reification a little too much. I have no philosophical troubles with other membranes or whatever messing with our universe. I'd have to study M-theory more to get something resembling an understanding, though.

Just for comparison, the best human engineering example is the Gravity Wave Telescope, which was built with a precision of accuracy to one part in ten with 23 zeros. The Designer, this "external agent" that created our universe must possess an intellect, knowledge, creativity and power trillions and trillions of times greater than we humans have.

You presume this designer without evidence.

Now a person who doesn't believe in God has to find some way to explain all of this. One of the more common explanations seems to be "There was an infinite number of universes, so it was inevitable that things would have turned out right in at least one of them."

Weird, but not unreasonable, given where physics seems to be going.

Assuming of course that the "Right Universe" is referring to our Universe.

If it wasn't, we wouldn't be here to care about it. Our counterparts in the "right universe" would be.

The "infinite universes" theory is truly an amazing theory. Just think about it, if there is an infinite number of universes, then absolutely everything is not only possible...It's actually happened, or is happening! That to me is even more amazing than a single Universe Theory, but to the Non-believer, this sorta, kinda, maybe says ...... CHANCE, or that there is no intelligent designer we may refer to as GOD!

Did the English-speaking part of your brain experience a stroke?

Some people believe in God with a capital G.

And some folks believe in Chance with a Capital C. This is perfect idiocy, accurate to one part in ten with 120 zeros.

And I agree. Chance isn't that important in the scheme of things. Glad I believe in evolution, and not that idocy.

America, please come back to God, he will accept you and forgive you with open arms. God is certainly aware of how tough it is here, but don't blame God for so many turning to evil. God did not force Eve to accept Satan's temptation. God does not force each of us to accept Satan's plan and not God's plan of Redemption.

"Come back" implies that America left. America was founded as a secular nation. Of course, as the fairy tale goes, God designed Eve, so he knew she would accept temptation, and yet, somehow, it's her fault. And, of course, every bit of evidence supports what this guy's implying is "Satan's Plan" so God, by planting all this evidence all over the universe is at least giving up compelling arguments for an atheistic universe.

Those of us who are Believers in God and his plan of salvation through Messiah Yeshua/Jesus, and those of us who read his word the Holy Bible, know and have heard these words expressed many times:

John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

There's a big difference between expressing and proving.

The message contained within these few simple words in John 1:1 are absolute proof of the existence of God the creator of all that there is, was, or ever shall be. People who may have dozens of degrees through education after there names, are themselves proof that God exists simply because of that education.

Someone stop the circular argument, I want to get off.

Skipping ahead...

"Messages, languages and coded information never, ever come from anything else besides a mind. No one has ever produced a single example of a message that did not come from a mind."

Lots of people get hundreds a day. I'm one of the lucky few, probably because I don't give out my email to doinks like this guy.

Nature can create fascinating patterns - snowflakes, sand dunes, crystals, stalagmites and stalagtites. Tornados and turbulence and cloud formations. But non-living things cannot create language. They *cannot* create codes. Rocks cannot think and they cannot talk. And they cannot create information. Not without God's help of course!

Living things can create information, and if all those abiogenesis experiments are any indication, non-living things can indeed become living things. Of course, there are probably lots of abuses of the term "information" here. MarkCC can handle those, if he likes.

It is believed and taught by many that life on planet earth arose naturally from the "primordial soup," the early ocean which produced enzymes and eventually RNA, DNA, and primitive cells.

But there is still a problem with this theory: It fails to answer the question, 'Where did the information come from originally?

Nice of you to change definitions, Humpty Dumpty. Randomness/chance played some of the role in creating information of this type.

Skipping to the end:

As simple as this question is, neither you and certainly not one of your so-called highly educated Godless cohorts are able to explain where the information came from. This riddle is "So simple any child can understand, yet so complex, not one unbeliever or atheist can solve it."

No, it's not simple. You're deluding yourself by ignoring a lot of stuff, and making up other stuff. Come back when you feel like being honest.

So, to summarize this guy's non-arguments, "Science is right! Therefore, science is wrong!" Followed by a LOT of disinformation about information theory.

I need to spend some more quality time with my rednelb to get my brain back to its normal state.

Dogfight #1: Michael Behe

The following interview actually happened in my imagination (La-la Land adjacent):

We're here today with Michael Behe, one of the leading propeller heads of the Church of the Butt Propeller.

Woah! The theory of intelligent design is not a religiously based idea, even though devout people opposed to the teaching of evolution cite it in their arguments.

First, ID isn't a theory. It's unfalsifiable, and therefore untestable. It's not even a hypothesis because of that. Second, it's kind of hard to ignore the religious motivations. Judge Jones sure found a lot of that in the school boards.

The contemporary argument for intelligent design is based on physical evidence and a straightforward application of logic. The argument for it consists of four linked claims. The first claim is uncontroversial: we can often recognize the effects of design in nature.

I don't recognize any "effects of design" in nature. Everything I've ever observed can be explained by evolution and other naturalistic theories.

For example, unintelligent physical forces like plate tectonics and erosion seem quite sufficient to account for the origin of the Rocky Mountains. Yet they are not enough to explain Mount Rushmore.

True, but there's nothing in nature like Mount Rushmore: We know who designed it, how it was designed, and why it was designed. We have all the evidence behind the planning, building, and stated purposes. Life, however, was most likely "designed" by unintelligent evolution. We've been able to successfully apply evolution's principles for "designing" things for us, and it only takes a little speculation to come up with testable hypotheses about how particular features evolved. And even if we can't immediately think of a way something evolved, that doesn't mean it's impossible for evolution to account for it. All that first claim of yours is that some things "look" designed, but science is about going beyond first impressions.

Of course, we know who is responsible for Mount Rushmore, but even someone who had never heard of the monument could recognize it as designed!

Not really. If an alien beamed down to Earth, having never seen a human, he might think it's just erosion somehow leaving a bunch of strangely smooth surfaces. I think you're letting your prior knowledge of the human designers get in the way of your objectivity.

*Rolls eyes* Which leads to the second claim of the intelligent design argument: the physical marks of design are visible in aspects of biology. This is uncontroversial, too. The 18th-century clergyman William Paley likened living things to a watch, arguing that the workings of both point to intelligent design.

But that's a false analogy. Watches don't reproduce, like life does. Life can pass on traits and features that work, as well as build new ones through mutation and all those other genetic tricks.

For example, Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, once wrote that biologists must constantly remind themselves that what they see was not designed but evolved. Imagine a scientist repeating through clenched teeth: "It wasn't really designed. Not really."

How I mine for quotes? Just because some humans have the apophenia to see design doesn't mean it was designed. Science is about looking beyond first impressions, remember? If we stuck with first impressions, we'd all be hiding from Zeus and his magic thunderbolts of lightning, very, very frightning.

The resemblance of parts of life to engineered mechanisms like a watch is enormously stronger than what Reverend Paley imagined. In the past 50 years modern science has shown that the cell, the very foundation of life, is run by machines made of molecules. There are little molecular trucks in the cell to ferry supplies, little outboard motors to push a cell through liquid.

Using words like "machines" doesn't change anything. Human intelligence is sufficient to design "machines", but that doesn't mean that intelligence is required.

The next claim in the argument for design is that we have no good explanation for the foundation of life that doesn't involve intelligence.

Hel-lo-o! Abiogenesis. We've been able to create conditions where amino acids and such show up spontaneously. We may not have pegged down the Earth's initial conditions, but it's apparently far easier than you give credit.

Darwinists assert that their theory can explain the appearance of design in life as the result of random mutation and natural selection acting over immense stretches of time. Some scientists, however, think the Darwinists' confidence is unjustified. They note that although natural selection can explain some aspects of biology, there are no research studies indicating that Darwinian processes can make molecular machines of the complexity we find in the cell.

First, I imagine there are a lot more scientists out there named Steve would disagree. Second, just because your imagination isn't as good as theirs is no reason to give up and say "godoopsImeanthedesignerdidit."

Scientists skeptical of Darwinian claims include many who have no truck with ideas of intelligent design, like those who advocate an idea called complexity theory, which envisions life self-organizing in roughly the same way that a hurricane does, and ones who think organisms in some sense can design themselves.

Scientists like who?

The fourth claim in the design argument is also controversial: in the absence of any convincing non-design explanation, we are justified in thinking that real intelligent design was involved in life.

There's no real controversy behind that claim: It's an argument from ignorance, and a call for surrender. You can't make an assertion based on lack of evidence. Thunderbolts of lightning, very, very frightning again.

It's important to keep in mind that it is the profound appearance of design in life that everyone is laboring to explain, not the appearance of natural selection or the appearance of self-organization.

There you go on again about appearances. If there is a designer out there, I thank him for not making you go into medicine.

The strong appearance of design allows a disarmingly simple argument: if it looks, walks and quacks like a duck, then, absent compelling evidence to the contrary, we have warrant to conclude it's a duck. Design should not be overlooked simply because it's so obvious.

Then don't use its "obviousness" as evidence. Make a testable hypothesis and *gasp* test it!

Still, some critics claim that science by definition can't accept design, while others argue that science should keep looking for another explanation in case one is out there.

Oh, no! Straw Dog! Why! Why'd he knock you down so shortly after creating you?! The problem isn't with design, it's with you openly advocating laziness as the process to reach it. The reason we search for other explanations is because they have promise. Until you can come up with a way to test for design other than "it looks designed," ID shows no promise whatsoever.

But we can't settle questions about reality with definitions, nor does it seem useful to search relentlessly for a non-design explanation of Mount Rushmore.

For the former: Exactly, we can't redefine science to include "laziness" as a legitimate research technique. For the latter: You're right, because we have very strong evidence about the design of Mount Rushmore. Unless someone has an alternate explanation with even stronger evidence, we shouldn't waste time. Intelligent Design, however, is still at zero evidence. Until you can gather evidence beyond appearances generated by your lack of imagination, ID should not be bothered with.

Besides, whatever special restrictions scientists adopt for themselves don't bind the public, which polls show, overwhelmingly, and sensibly, thinks that life was designed. And so do many scientists who see roles for both the messiness of evolution and the elegance of design.

Just because the public is allowed to be lazy, doesn't mean that ID should be given any consideration. Personally, I'd like to remove laziness from the public with science education. Also... "many scientists?" Who? As for the "messiness" of evolution, well, that's opinion. I see evolution as very elegant, since it doesn't require the constant attention of anyone. I think it's time to end this interview, since you're spinning around in circles... with a radius of zero.

Uh... what's that sword for?

I told you I'd get you Behe's head on a silver platter. Sorry it took so long.
Special thanks to Skeptico for showing me some juicy gems of Behe's anti-wisdom.