Funny Thought

1. According to the Justice League cartoon, Nth metal is an isotope of iron with an atomic weight of 676.

2. According to the Bible, god can be fought off by iron chariots.

So, just how badly would an Nth metal chariot mess up god?

Quote ot the Time Being: The Spoils of War

Today's quote comes from Ed Brayton of Dispatches from the Culture Wars, on a topic I recently thought about, again:

Probably the single biggest passage that did it for me was Numbers 31. This is the attack on the Midianites. The Israelites believed that two Midianite women had “tempted” two men to worship their god instead of Jehovah. As a result, Moses commanded — supposedly because God told him to do so — that all Midianites be slaughtered. Except for the virgin females, who were divided up among the soldiers as the spoils of war. And it occurred to me that this is something that even Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin didn’t do. Even Nazi Germany didn’t force the women they’d conquered to marry the men who had slaughtered their fathers and brothers. That’s how barbaric it was, it went beyond anything even the worst human beings would do. And this is the same being that supposedly commands us to love one another and to do unto others as we would have them do unto us? It just didn’t add up for me.

To make things worse, a lot of fundamentalists believe Moses is being rewarded with eternal bliss for leading a "holy" life.

As for the evils of Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin, the fact that they didn't order anything like this suggests that even our archetypes for complete monsters are still less evil than the god of the Old Testament. Even if you try to detach the god from the barbarism, it still makes a far more horrifying vision for humanity than anything modern fundies can confabulate for the "degradation" of our civilization. How exactly are rock and roll, Harry Potter, and equal marriage rights going to produce anything even remotely as bad?

Andy Hamilton's Search for Satan

I thought I'd go ahead and point this out. Andy Hamilton does a humorous documentary about Satan and how the idea has changed over time. The link has an embedded YouTube video that will probably end up being taken down sooner or later, so if you don't have access to BBC Four, you should probably watch while you can.

I'm only partway through as I type this, but it's looking fun so far. I'm curious just how much (or rather, how little) information about Satan is actually in the Bible. I pretty sure a huge bulk of the common perception will be linked to Dante's Inferno.

Fundamentalism Corrupts

Unsurprising news: Obama sides against a terrorist group. Rush Limbaugh sides with those terrorists because they identify themselves as "Christian." It turns out those Christian terrorists are very, very depraved.

One point I'll make sure to bring up if someone defends Limbaugh by saying he 'just' didn't research the group:

Why not? You think it's excusable that he just automatically assumes a Christian group MUST be doing good? That's a depraved form of moral subjectivism at work: It doesn't matter what actions you take, but which team you're on. That is exactly how religious fundamentalism has been corrupting the concept of morality for thousands of years. That's how fundamentalists justify atrocities. To them, the affiliation of an action is more important than its morality. That tribal subjectivism is the nihilistic foundation of fundamentalist Christianity AND religious fundamentalism in general. By choosing to judge them based on their professed allegiance to a deity instead of researching the morality of their actions, Limbaugh has demonstrated a belief in tribal subjectivism.

Civilized human beings don't think that way. Rape is immoral. Period. Slavery is immoral. Period. Civilized morality is not absolutely, perfectly objective, but it at least strives for something resembling objectivity, fairness, and impartiality. Actions matter more than arbitrary allegiances. I'll take an honest and imperfect effort over the nihilism and depravity that consistently results from fundamentalism.

Graphic of the Time Being

jamesmc, in a comment over at Dispatches From the Culture Wars posted a link to this image. Guess what countries the fundamentalist Christians admire.

You may need to click to enlarge.

Blasphemy Day

There most likely is no god.

Evolution is demonstrably true.

Priests, ministers, and people of faith are mere mortals like the rest of us.

The god of the Bible is a cruel, psychotic egomaniac. Thankfully, he doesn't exist, and even if he did, it's good to know he can be defeated by iron chariots.

The god of the Bible lacks the ability to feel love on par with the average human being.

Faith is an act of deceitful arrogance and hubris. Saying "I don't know" is an act of honest humility.

The universe has no inherent purpose or meaning. We create meaning and purpose.

Marriage is about love. It is not about procreation, religion, tradition, or greed.

An attack on same sex marriage is an attack on all marriage.

Religion has been used to justify countless evils, and the good attributed to it can and should be replaced with secular pursuits and institutions.

Quote of the Time Being: Secession

Normally, when someone makes a joke about letting Texas secede from the US, I tend to make a comment along the lines of, "Okay, but give me some warning so I can move out, first." But Vicki provides a good reason to never seriously consider allowing any nutty state to secede:

When you say “let them secede” you’re also saying “let them beat gay people to death, let them imprison women for having miscarriages, let them imprison poor blacks on dubious charges and then use them as slave labor.” They’re doing too much of that already: do you really think an independent, right-wing south wouldn’t be worse? Think about that runaway gay sixteen-year-old: they might manage to hitchhike or pay for a bus ticket to someone whetter, but they’re not going to have a passport to get them to what’s left of the United States.

Lunch Break Rage

I'm worried my work plans are going to be ruined today by my current bad mood. I was eating at a restaurant with CSPAN on their TVs, which I was initially relieved, since one other member of the chain usually leaves Faux News on. Of course, that relief was shortly canceled out: The topic was a repeal of a ban on same sex marriage. I don't talk about it nearly as much as I should, but I'm one of those people who sees attacks on same sex marriage as an attack on all marriage.

The part where I came in had one person defending same sex marriage, calmly but firmly listing all the benefits that are denied to same sex spouses because of such bans. I quietly stated my agreement with him. That bit of warm fuzzy didn't last, as another person favoring the Destruction of Marriage Act (DOMA) started his spiel. Some of his points in short:

1. Tradition: He listed all sorts of "support" in the form of what nations supported as marriage in the past, neglecting to mention that for just as long, people of those traditions treated marriage as a cynical financial or political transaction. Naturally, one of the common tropes that leaps to mind is that the same argument could be used to support bans on interracial marriages.

2. Appeal to Popularity: He referred to some polls I hadn't heard of (and can't look up without more information) where the poll subjects favored "a man and a woman" as the definition of marriage. Sorry, but minority rights trump majority rule. You can't deny someone a right just because he or she wants to exercise that right in an unpopular fashion. Of course, those who are quick with search tools can probably find polls that contradict the ones he cited.

3. The Baby Factory argument: The idea that marriage exists solely for biological reproduction is one that hits close to home. There's one married couple I know where one member had to have a life-saving operation that removed her reproductive abilities. This couple already had children, but imagine if the surgery happened before they had children: If you're going to use The Baby Factory argument, you have to enforce it equally. The Baby Factory argument would require that the government annul their marriage. Combine this with the mob rule argument above, and just try to imagine what it'd be like if people voted for those two to get a divorce, and had that decision enforced by the state. The Baby Factory argument is a rejection of individual autonomy and of the modern marriage based on people wanting to share their lives with someone.

4. "Sexism says so!": He described gender roles as 'non-fungible' to claim that a child absolutely requires one man and one woman to fill the role model slots. On one level, this is a form of the tradition argument, where culture has dictated gender roles. I'd consider it foolish to think that modern culture has found the absolute limits to what the different genders are capable of. Humans are versatile beings. Some women are very good at embodying "male" roles and some men are very good at representing "female" roles. I don't think it's the state's role to dictate who can or cannot fulfill that role. What's next? If I find a woman I love, could the state force me to attend more football games and monster truck rallies to prove my "manliness" is high enough to get married?

On another level, it seems to assume that the child will be sheltered by the parents from the outside world, never meeting other adults worthy of being role models. There are other family members, friends of the family, teachers, mentors and so on who could act as role models. It takes a village to raise a child. And what are they going to do with single parents? Force them to marry a state-sanctioned spouse against their will? Funny how these people who want to regulate marriage tend to pay lip service to "smaller government."

I don't think they buy that idea themselves. Even they must realize how ridiculous it would be to enforce those stereotypes. Scratch that, I'm underestimating the capacity for stupidity in humanity, again. All these excuses reek of an attempt to rationalize an irrational bigotry after they've committed themselves to the position.

Every excuse I've ever heard for banning same-sex marriage is like this: Make up marriage rules for one type of case, and then don't enforce those same rules to heterosexual marriages when they fall short of the so-called ideal. They also roundly reject love and the individual's self-determination as the basis of a marriage in favor of the shackles of sexist traditions, the dictates of a mob, the success of insectine reproductive strategy, or the insanity of ancient religions.

That is why an attack on same-sex marriage is an attack on all marriage.

Zoomy Physics

I've been way too quiet on my blog, but I came across an interesting term, which might be meme-worthy: Zoomies. Sin particles that contaminate a location. I imagine most of you have encountered the idea before. I really wonder what sort of strange mindset causes people to think like that.

My first real encounter with zoomies, barring sci-fi and fantasy works, was shortly before I gave up going to church. I had just done something that helped eventually lead me to atheism: I read the Bible. In this particular case, the offending parts were in Numbers, when Moses was commanding all that genocide. Inevitably, I confronted someone who claimed to believe the whole Bible with those crimes, expecting him to do as I had done at the time: Label that part as something corrupt people added afterward.

That's when it got surreal: He said that the victims of those Biblical genocides deserved what they god because they had filled up the land with so much sin, it expelled them, almost like he was talking about an ecological disaster, rather than human beings engaging in religiously inspired plunder, mass murder, and rapine against another group for suspiciously unspecific sins. It didn't help that he talked as if every person in those victim nations were interchangeable, like sin was impersonal, rather than something you associate with a particular individual's crime. In the real world, we don't blindly punish everyone from the murder's neighborhood, we seek to punish the murderer.

I felt like I had stared madness in the face: Apparently, committing a crime wasn't what his version of god was angered by: It was these magical zoomy particles that offended him. In other words, god didn't care about helping or hurting other people. He didn't care about happiness or suffering. The illusion of god's love was just a Type 1 error caused by an arbitrary coincidence between zoomy particle production and harmful behavior. Being sinful and being evil were, under zoomy physics, independent of each other.

And the contamination factor just makes it worse: Under zoomy physics, a person could give to charity, save lives, and generally work hard to make the world a better place. But it was all for naught if his neighbors produced enough zoomies to cover that up. A kind person could therefore be treated as anathema for reasons outside his control. An innocent child could be treated the same as a murderer just for being born in the vicinity of one.

It strikes me as an abdication of individual responsibility and accountability. Can you imagine if it were applied in the real world? Sadly, I think I can: A murder has taken place in a slum. Rather than do a real investigation to figure out who performed the murder, the cops just take in the first person who looks "slum" or "ghetto" or "gang" enough to have done the crime, and assume that even if good evidence against the accusation comes up, he "obviously" deserves punishment for something because living in the slum means he's contaminated with zoomies.

Now there's the reverse: Preachers of allegedly high morals get caught performing devious con jobs and/or twisted acts sexual manipulation leading to some flavor of rape. What's one of the standard excuses? "The zoomies made me do it!" Okay, they typically say "devil" instead of "zoomies," but it's essentially the same thing: Blaming something else for their crimes. I'm reminded of instances of the Catholic Church blaming hippies and such for allegedly loosening moral taboos against child molestation as a cause for priestly abuse.

Normally, I'd be eager to write off zoomy physics as an invention of people who just want to have a ready excuse for doing evil, but if everyone thought of it as a transparent excuse, it wouldn't work. I can't imagine what must be going on in the heads of sincere believers in zoomies.

Meme Concept: Homophobia = Crypto-Islamic Fundamentalism

A random idea I came up with: Accuse homophobes of being Crypto-Islamic fundamentalists wanting to impose Sharia law on the free world.

It's not true, but it's plausible enough for a joke:

Islamic fundamentalist theocracies commonly have anti-homosexual laws on a religious basis, and our "crypto" friends also want anti-homosexual laws on a religious basis.

Islamic theocracies also commonly require women by law to wear highly concealing clothing on the premise that all men are sexual predators with no willpower to resist a revealed ankle. In my experience, homophobes have heavy, heavy overlap with people who issue apologia for man-on-woman rape by claiming the woman was dressing provocatively, thus, in effect, claiming that men should not be expected to have the willpower to control themselves.

I think this meme has shock value since it draws attention to the worst similarities between the allegedly "good" Christian fundamentalists and the obviously evil Islamic fundamentalists.

Of course, I expect that a typical response will be a temporary alliance of convenience with radical Islam to fight the evil of our consistent morality. In such a case, it'd be interesting to see what happens if one of us were to quote the "crypto" in a separate thread where he denounces Islam.

A Little Meme

FUCK YOU, REPUBLICANS!

Yeah, it's short and vague, but that's pretty much getting to be the best response to the crazies of the party now that they've mainstreamed insanity. There's no shortage of reasons to be angry with the party, and I imagine it's worse for the more sensible (and hopefully ex-) members of the party to see the fringe lunatics running the asylum.

Not sure where to try to direct Ellen Lewin's simple statement of rage as a meme, but there is something primal about it that makes it more interesting to me than standard curses.

Science Works

There's one argument denialists have trouble facing when it comes to science: Science works. Pragmatism is one of the key virtues of science: Either your theories make accurate predictions or they don't. Good science is about getting down to that issue. Many denialists, however, won't let reliable, repeatable, independently verifiable data get in their way. In this post, I'll explore some of the tactics they use to ignore the robustness of science.

Let us imagine we have encountered someone who denies the accuracy of quantum mechanics. Any informed layman should know that QM plays an extremely vital role in our current civilization. Transistors, for example, are ubiquitous in our computer-driven infrastructure. If QM wasn't reasonably accurate, you wouldn't be able to read this blog post.

Given my experience with other forms of denialism, there are a number of standard arguments presented at this point:

First comes the argument that all the experts are in on some kind of sinister plot, knowingly lying about QM to students, and only allow the top students to be in on the "real" theory that actually drives our technology.

How would this conspiracy maintain itself? If they distributed information that they know is false, how would they maintain the illusion of its accuracy? How would they prevent any curious person from experimenting and finding the "real" answer? How could they silence him? And how would they pay for all this beating around the bush? WHY would they set up such a conspiracy? What would they have to gain?

Next, there's the idea that mankind just stumbled on the technology without any understanding of the underlying mechanics. While there are some examples of such luck, it wouldn't last long. The false theory would stumble on more and more wrong predictions as time went on, and solving an unexplained anomaly is how scientists gain prestige. You don't get research grants for maintaining the status quo.

And finally, one of the most common responses is to remain ignorant of the theory's successful predictions, no matter how many times they are asked to account for it.


This story is the same for just about any major scientific theory. Evolution was how we breed animals and plants according to our desires. Evolution also gives us an understanding of medicine. Heliocentrism and gravitation give us the ability to send probes into deep space. Relativity gives us the Global Positioning System. If science didn't produce reliable results, we wouldn't have these things.


Science. It works, bitches.

The Basis of Morality

It's a subject that's been gone over many times, but I think Steven Novella put up a good post.

I especially like the part where he points out something that I should have realized myself: Non-theistic morality is inherently more objective than divine command theory. Why?

First, moral philosophy is a transparent process where anyone can find out why some things are considered good or evil. There are first principles and rules that are derived from those principles. By having everyone asking questions about the process, you tend to reduce individual biases.

Second, because of all the conflicts between religions and even priests within a religion. There are countless interpretations of holy books. Even if there were some magic man giving out an objective morality, what would the basis of those decisions be? Divine command theory just strikes me as a morality without any basis whatsoever. As far as I'm concerned, it's objectively random morality before you add any subjective interpretation by humans.

Christianity: The Apocalypse Cult That Survived, Part 1

One of the things that struck me when reading the Bible was how much Jesus started to look less like the peaceful, loving guy, and more like the stereotypical cult leader. Naturally, the religion has the usual promise of nasty things for unbelievers, tales of miracles and divine origins, and so on and so forth. Instead of that typical stuff, I thought I'd deal with some parts that seem to be ignored in my dealings with fundies.

Let's take a look at some samples:

One of the trademarks of a cult is that they divide families. The family is an important source of support for most people. A cult wants its members to be vulnerable and dependent on the cult, so other means of support need to be cut off.

Matthew 8:21 And another of his disciples said unto him, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father. 8:22 But Jesus said unto him, Follow me; and let the dead bury their dead.

Jesus tells the disciple to value the religion more than closure with his father. I'm of the opinion that funerals are for the living so that they can come to terms with the loss and remember the good times with the dearly departed.

Matthew 10:20 For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you. 10:21 And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the child: and the children shall rise up against their parents, and cause them to be put to death.

Granted, cultural change tends to cause a lot of friction, but this passage just seems to relish in the idea of families tearing themselves limb from limb.

Matthew 10:34 Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. 10:35 For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. 10:36 And a man's foes shall be they of his own household. 10:37 He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.

The message is clear: God is possessive and needy. The cult is more important than your loved ones.

Matthew 12:46 While he yet talked to the people, behold, his mother and his brethren stood without, desiring to speak with him. 12:47 Then one said unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren stand without, desiring to speak with thee. 12:48 But he answered and said unto him that told him, Who is my mother? and who are my brethren?

Jesus wouldn't even acknowledge his family when they wanted to talk to him.

Matthew 15:4 For God commanded, saying, Honour thy father and mother: and, He that curseth father or mother, let him die the death.

It's rather strange to hear him defend parents, but it looks like he's still supporting bloodlust as a means to resolve family conflict.

Matthew 19:12 For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother's womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.

There are a lot of cults that stress virginity and asexuality to the point of castration. I'm not sure, but I think this is often meant to target people with longstanding romantic troubles, to free them from the desires that cause them trouble.

Matthew 19:29 And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life.

Abandon your family and your country for the cult, and the big man'll make it worth your while.

23:9 And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven.

Yeah, don't honor the guy who (I hope) raised you with love and care, honor the cult's idol instead.

And that's just the book of Matthew, only about warped family values. This was some of the early stuff that got me started on the road to atheism. Reading the Bible is usually one of the first steps towards deconversion.

Barking Up the Right Tree: No Sale

There's one thing that needs repeating for the sake of theists who ask why we're atheists, what proof do we have that their god doesn't exists, etcetera: Atheism isn't a belief in itself, it's a lack of belief. It is a negative belief.

Theism is a positive claim, the idea that something called a "god" has some form of existence and an effect on the world. The burden of proof lies on the person making the positive claim. It's the theist's job to sell their idea of god. We're atheists because we simply aren't buying it right now.

Imagine you answer the door, and find it's a salesman with a box covered in question marks. The first thing he does is ask you is for a good reason to not buy his product. That's what it's like to be an atheist.

1. Every theist has their own definition of "god." I don't keep a list of all of them. To put the exchange in other terms:

Theist: "What proof do you have that god doesn't exist?"
Atheist: "Which god?"

And even then, the answer isn't clear: Some Christians, for example, believe in a fire and brimstone god while other Christians believe in a peaceful, merciful god.

2. The burden of proof is on the 'salesman' to convince me his product is worthwhile, and to do that, he has to be able to define and demonstrate it to someone. I don't need to have a disproof. He needs to provide proof that his product works. Until I find a god who has predictable, repeatable effects on the universe, I'll simply file them all into the same drawer as other unproven entities like unicorns and psychic powers and do something more productive or entertaining with my life.

3. A lack of belief in something is supposed to be the default position in logic before evidence is presented. Theism has not earned this position due to its merits: From where I'm standing, theism is falsely elevated to the default assumption because of peer pressure, fashion, tradition, and other social pressures. I don't assume that those things automatically follow logic because I know human beings can rationalize just about any mistake they make with logical fallacies.

You Know What's Bullshit?

I think to spite Gabriel, I'll try once again to get back to regular blogging. Since it broke his brain to find out that I don't fit any of the stereotypes seen on his sitcoms, I'm going to list a lot of stuff that I consider nonsense, and thought so for most of my adult life. He'll probably return to whine about my disbelief in some other sacred cow of his. So anyway, here goes the list, subject to updates...

Oh, wait. Fair warning: There's a little bit of mild language below the fold. Not a whole lot.

Acupuncture: Bullshit, but not just any bullshit. It's Maoist bullshit, for that double bullshitty taste.

Alien Spacecraft and Abductions: Why would some shitheads from another planet build causality-defying FTL engines and fly a ship all the way over here to investigate our shitholes?

Area 51: The alien story is bullshit. Probably an old air force testing base that may have turned into an illegal waste dump for the government to throw away its really nasty shit. After some officer goofed by denying the place existed, they used the bullshit alien story to bullshit the Communists into wasting intelligence resources investigating the shithouse. And some of their gullible shitheads probably fell for it.

Atlantis: Bullshit that got flushed down the toilet when no one was looking. In fact, they want you to take their word for it that it was ever there.

The Aurora Stealth Aircraft: Possibly bullshit, possibly a development code name for an existing, publicly known aircraft, or possibly a project that got canceled for being shittier than the other stealth aircraft.

Ayurveda: Bullshit, with a hint of arsenic and mercury.

Bigfoot: Bullshit so steamy, all attempts to photograph it end up coming out fuzzy and indistinct.

Communism: Bullshit that stinks so bad, you'll be made into an unperson by The Party if you point it out.

Creationism: The bullshit belief that nothingness randomly shitted out a perfect, complex, sentient god, who made the universe and somehow did a shitty job on designing our eyes, despite allegedly being perfect.

The Crocoduck: Textbook example of bullshit the Creationists should be looking for if they want to be taken seriously. I'm not holding my breath.

Distant Healing: Bullshit you can smell from miles away.

Dragons: Cool bullshit that's fun to pretend to slay with polyhedral dice, but despite Creationists attempts to argue otherwise, are completely bullshit in reality. Besides, dinosaurs are cooler because they were real. Even without the fire breath. We have the fossils. We win.

Fairies: Bullshit that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle believed in because he didn't think it was possible that some girls could cut out pictures and pose for photographs. Therefore, he bullshitted, the fairies, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.

Faith: The bullshit belief that you're an infallible god, thus you can't bullshit yourself, therefore you are right. Period.

The Flood: Bullshit story about a family who somehow rounded up all the animals of the world in a boat. When Flood believers were faced with the logistics of handing all the food and shit for so many animals on such a tiny boat, they made up a bullshit Super-Duper Evolution theory (but decided not to call it that because someone might call them on being inconsistent with their other bullshit) where the animals could super-mutate into multiple species overnight and somehow gain enough genetic diversity to make it look like nothing happened at all. Oh, and some bullshit about land plants being able to live underwater, and salt water magically knowing not to mix with fresh water so as to not kill all the fish.

Hitler, Adolph: Anti-Semite bullshitter Creationist who believed God commanded him to perform eugenics and burn books like The Origin of Species for not buying into his bullshit. Had a line about bullshitting so big, no one would believe someone could bullshit so big without evidence... Which turned out to be bullshit. Inspired by Martin Luther, a guy believed reason was evil because it gave people bullshit detectors, and you can't have that. Adolph entertained bullshit fantasies about joining the Catholic and Protestant churches together, trying to put his religious bullshit into school curricula and mandate state-led prayers in class.

Homeopathy: Bullshit that isn't watered down.

Iridology: You won't believe your eyes when you see this bullshit.

The Loch Ness monster: Bullshit that stinks so bad, you could make a profit from building a tourist trap around the spot where someone allegedly smelled it.

Lysenkoism: Bullshit with Joseph Stalin and Sarah Palin's seals of approval, so you know it's quality bullshit.

McCarthy, Joseph: Bullshitting witch hunter who was inspired by Stalin to save America from Stalin by trying and failing to turn America into an authoritarian Christian Communist State. Got publicly called out on his incompetent, illegal authoritarian bullshit and lost all support. Now, Texas is trying to bullshit us into thinking he's a hero.

Nationalism: Bullshit pretending to be patriotism. Nationalists are happy to let their country go down the toilet and still call it the greatest on Earth and throw feces at anyone who dares to suggest the country isn't as great as it used to be. Patriots actually care enough about their country to get their shit together and work to make their country great.

O'Reilly, Bill: Bullshitter who doesn't know what causes the tides. No, I'm not shitting you. He really doesn't.

Psychics: Bullshitters who often don't realize they're bullshitting you with cold reading and similar shit like that. A bunch of real gullible shitheads in America tried training soldiers in their techniques because the Communists fell for this bullshit, and you just know Communist science can't be bullshit.

Race: Quite often a bullshit excuse self-entitled lazy high school dropouts (it doesn't matter what race they are) use to feel better about themselves for not doing anything and blame The Other for their inability to get a job or an education. Also, with hopefully increasing rarity, a bullshit excuse an employer uses to give special privileges to a high school dropout who looks like his phenotype instead of hiring the guy who can actually do a full day's work to actually earn a full day's pay. Doubly bullshit since blood groups are probably a much better indicator of race than skin color.

Reflexology: Bullshit, freshly stepped in.

Reiki: Bullshit that's not touching you! It's not touching you!

Theraputic Touch: Bullshit that rubs on smooth.

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This is easily the most profane post I have ever written. Want to add your own?

The Cult of Permissiveness

I had a flashback to a fundie troll I once dueled with named Annie. She was a crazy mom who repeatedly argued that the atheist readers of the blog chose to become atheists because we wanted to lead a sinful life. That's what she told her children, and we called her a liar for it. I wish I thought to phrase my rebuttals the way I'm going to write this post:

Fundamentalists live in a culture of permissiveness that disgusts us. That disgust is what motivated me to stop attending church. There were a number of moral boundaries I refused to cross, and I refused to associate with anyone who took such a flippant, frivolous attitude towards those boundaries.

The doctrine of Hell requires a permissive attitude towards torture.

Annie's atheist concentration camps (I believe she actually used the phrase "concentration camps"!) require a permissive attitude towards killing and religious persecution.

Creationism requires a permissive attitude towards deception.

Belief that god ordered the wars described in the Old Testament requires a permissive attitude towards genocide.

Belief that god's will is our purpose for living requires a permissive attitude towards slavery.

Belief that our humanity is defined at the moment of conception, in my experience with pro-lifers, appears to require a permissive attitude towards eugenics: The ones I've dealt with essentially were arguing that our DNA defines whether or not we're a person, not our thoughts, emotions, and consciousness.

Belief in the fables about people "cursed" or "chosen" by god was used to establish and maintain a culture of permissiveness towards slavery, murder, and racism.

Belief in the dominance of one sex over another was, and is currently being used to maintain a culture of permissiveness towards rape.

Belief in the value of faith requires a permissive attitude towards hubris and the idea that a person can be infallible and beyond question. In other words, faith is the act of believing oneself to be the supreme being. All the other vices owe a lot towards this attitude.

The Poverty of the Creationist Imagination

This post isn't going to be about the usual shortcomings in a Creationist's imagination, like their inability to appreciate how long a million years is or how many living things there are on this world. It's about the inherent violence and hunger for power that drives their thinking.

In my experience (your mileage may vary, of course), the typical Creationist looks at science the way Hollywood and Saturday morning cartoons do: To them, science is just fancy magic people use to grab power.

Let's say someone actually invents a shrink ray. Your typical science and tech savvy person will be thinking stuff along the lines of "Does this mean I could install a gaming-quality computer into something the size of a pocket calculator?" at the very least. Others will be thinking of ways of fast transit: If you can shrink a payload's mass, it'll take less energy to transport it, assuming you can unshrink it later.

Your typical Creationist will instead be thinking, "Oh, noes! They're going to shrink the moon and hold it for ransom!"

That's the general illustration. One example I recall was a ban on research into mixing human genes into other species because the Creationists thought stuff along the lines of "Oh noes! They're going to make pig slaves and pig soldiers!" when those of us in the know were thinking of growing replacement human organs in livestock or bacteria that can mass produce vital hormones sick people need.

Another poverty that comes to mind is the Creationist idea that evolution is supposed to be a progression to bigger, stronger, and more badass. Complete bullshit. This kind of thinking is why you have idiots driving Canyoneros on big, flat cities to ultimately visit the corner convenience store, when a bike or *gasp* walking would be much easier. Bigger is not necessarily better. Bigger takes a lot of resources that might have better uses. Stronger doesn't matter if you don't need brute force.

This is especially true with humans. Just look at our civilization today. Our strength as a species isn't brute muscle, sharp claws, or fleetness of foot: It's our ability to cooperate and specialize. We're a brainy species. We can coordinate our efforts in amazing ways by communication. We're plastic enough that we can develop our own specialties to cover the weaknesses of others or enhance their strengths.

If we were as brutal as the straw men they implied, we wouldn't have doctors, and we wouldn't be constantly looking for new ways to improve medicine. When cooperation is your greatest strength, altruism comes naturally. Because we care for our sick, many of them get to grow up to be productive members of society and thus contribute to the good of our species.

This simple concept is often lost on Creationists who treat altruism like some sort of sacred (or profane) disadvantage with no practical value. Because they can't imagine altruism having a practical value, they assume evolution couldn't come up with it, and thus they start spreading their ignorance about evolution favoring individual selfishness. It's projection on a massive scale.

I find the eugenics projection particularly galling. After the fundie eugenicists started getting stigmatized and decided (for the sake of appearances only) that Darwin was right about it being immortal to impose livestock breeding methods on humans, they tried to turn it around, including a popular quote mine where they replace Darwin's disgust for the idea with ellipses, trying to claim that we're in favor of eugenics.

Uh, fellas, don't you know anything about our farming monocultures? You know that urban legend going around about how the modern dessert banana's going to be extinct within X years? There's a grain of truth to that: Seedless bananas are pretty much just clones of one another. At any time, nature could throw just the right kind of blight at the breed, and we'd have to start over from scratch. Aside from the natural altruism we have for our fellow sentient beings, we have a desire to avoid extinction.

Genetic diversity is a hedge against extinction. The more diversity there is, the more likely some members of the threatened species has some gene combination that overcomes whatever catastrophe eventually comes along. Eugenics reduces diversity, and with it, the chances something like a pandemic could cripple or wipe out mankind. Eugenics has a talent for creating stuff that serves a specifically desired function, but it has a bad habit of causing all sorts of problems. Founder effects can make rare recessive defects commonplace through inbreeding. You get livestock that couldn't survive without human supervision. And usually, with those favoring human eugenics programs, all you'd get out of it is a species that appeals to some guy's fetish for clones.

This culturally outdated alpha male craving for dominance and power just stands out whenever I hear a Creationist trying to tell me what I believe instead of actually listening. We've all got plenty of baggage from our simian ancestors, but we have to work past that sort of violent, selfish thinking if we want to prosper as a civilization.

The Creationists I know, however, can only offer strife and anarchy as an alternative.

A Little Story

I was walking along the beach one day when I spotted a pair of strange creatures lying on the sand. One was covered in brilliant pink fluff. It had two legs and strange flattened arms without fingers. The other looked similar in shape, but without legs, and it was instead covered in strangely smooth red skin. I first approached the pink fluffy one. It seemed like a normal animal in most ways: It had two eyes, a mouth, nostrils. It hopped around a little, and made a high jump, flapping its arms to push itself up the last few inches. I got closer and even held it in my hands without it protesting beyond a few nips with its pointy mouth, almost as if it didn't know to be afraid of me. The other lay motionless, apparently dead.

I took a closer look over the pink fluffy one, lifting up its flat arm, looking at how it was shaped. It seemed good for meat, so I killed it, cooked it, and ate it. I pieced together the bones and noticed some tiny little bumps at the ends of the arm, almost like little fingers that hadn't fully grown. The bone seemed normal enough, though hollow. The meat tasted good, but not terribly exotic.

After that, I took the smooth red creature and examined it closely. It had an appearance similar to the pink creature, but only on a superficial level: It had a pair of eyes, but they were more like decoration, as if someone carved and painted them out of whatever this material was. There was even a straight line down the length of its body, like two halves joined together imperfectly. There were even strange geometric marks on its belly, lined up in a perfect circle. On its back was a strange white knobby protrusion. I gently pulled at it and ended up twisting it, hearing little clicks underneath the skin. When I let go, the creature sprang to life, flapping its arms a few times. I dropped it and watched as its flapping slowed to a halt. I picked it up again, turned the knob several more times and threw the creature forward. It flew through the air for a while before losing its strength and fell to the ground.

I retrieved the creature and gently cut open its belly with my knife. There was nothing familiar inside. No blood, no entrails, just strange, smooth objects made of the same material as the knob. There were some spiral-shaped pieces of a shiny material, and white wheels with little teeth that would lock together. I winded the knob and watched the wheels turn. The teeth at the end of one wheel would push another into turning. I also noticed the shiny spirals get pressed tighter when I turned the knob and loosen as the wheels turned and the creature flapped. I even pulled out some of these parts and found that the creature could flap its arms once they were put back. It was the strangest experience I ever had.

I thought about these strange creatures for a while and came to some conclusions:

The pink fluffy creature was most likely a natural animal. It had a mouth, real eyes, bones, flesh, and all the internal organs of other animals. All of these parts were made of materials other animals already grow in their bodies. It probably came into being like other animals, when its parents mated, made a home, and raised it. It most likely needed to fly, to eat, to drink, and to find a mate to keep making more of its kind. It also probably needed to think about how to do all of those things and instincts to drive it towards survival and producing young.

The red smooth creature was a toy made to look like an animal similar to the pink one. It had no legs, apparently no mind, no internal organs except those needed to make it fly. This simplicity of its design suggested it had a distinct purpose: To fly and look like a living animal when it did. Such a purpose implies a craftsman. Without a craftsman, a creature that can't eat can't produce a child. Even if it had a child, such a child would be unable to grow without an ability to take in food. Without a way to eat and make replacement material, if something damaged it, it had no apparent means of healing itself, save a person making an identical part and replacing it. The geometry of the parts was also suspiciously precise, with perfect circles, straight lines, and right angles. These things almost never showed up in nature, especially not at that level of precision. Nature and life are complex, messy processes, with all sorts of forces working against or with one another. Simplicity is a sign of design. Simplicity implies an understanding of the forces of nature and the ability to isolate or control them to form such unnatural shapes.

I gathered a few supplies and put them in my boat, rowing in the direction I guessed the animals came from. Eventually, I came across a forested island filled with many animals like the pink fluffy one, only with a dazzling variety of color combinations. I walked around, noticing some smaller varieties of these creatures would fly away when they saw me. Some larger ones, about the size of the pink fluffy one did not. Some even cawed, squawked, and otherwise looked to challenge my presence. I killed a few of those for lunch and dinner.

I found a nest of twigs made by two of these creatures will small, undeveloped babies begging for food. The parents were red and white, but the babies' think fluff was pink. In another nest with two pink parents, the babies were varied: Red, pink, and white. After some thought, it occurred to me that the babies inherited part of their color from either parent. A red and a white would only produce pink offspring, but two pinks could pass down a discrete "red" or the "white" part of themselves and produce any combination from the result. Children often looked like they had some parts of both parents, but this made the heredity for one factor more obvious. If someone were to try to breed only pink creatures, they could never eliminate the tendency for red or white to show up, since, if heredity was discrete like I suspected, you couldn't blend the red and white by mating alone.

Also noteworthy was a nest with a violet baby. I could only speculate at this point, but it seems reasonable to suspect something went wrong when the parent's color was copied into the baby, producing a new color that might just stand out a little more in their mating dances. Or repel the opposite sex. Or it could do nothing. Such changes, even if they are random could, with the right circumstances, provide an advantage. Little 'mistakes' now and then could do something better in an unexpected way. If the mistake ended up being a disadvantage, no long term harm would be done to the creatures, since the unfortunate creature would be more likely to die before passing on that disadvantage. Even if it did pass it on once or twice, the struggle for survival would still make it difficult for those offspring.

There were many other possibilities for how that baby was born with violet fluff, but for now, I moved on.

My thoughts turned towards the larger territorial variety. Until I arrived, they were the largest creatures on the island. It's possible that being alone on this island, there was no benefit to keeping an instinct for running away from much larger creatures. But if circumstances changed and my tribe moved over here for hunting, the fearless ones would likely die out. Those who retained the instinct to fear large creatures would be more likely to escape a hunt and live to produce children. Not long after such a move, nearly all of them would have the instinctive fear. For the smaller ones, that would be less of a change, since they already deal with creatures larger than themselves. In fact, they could come to dominate, since smaller, more nimble targets would be harder to catch.

I felt my conclusion about the pink fluffy creature was quite secure: I saw others similar to it finding mates, raising young, and otherwise engaged in the struggle to raise the next generation. They were just like other animals, even if they had some odd features. I still needed to find out more about the smooth red creature, though.

I traveled further in my boat, eventually seeing a sandbar with a large wooden box on it. I broke off a side and found a number of smaller boxes made with a stiff sort of hemp-like material. They were painted with pictures similar to the smooth red creature, though in five different colors. Inside each one was a copy of mine, aside from the color. I examined each closely and found the similarity among the members disturbing. The only difference between the creatures were signs of tool working: They all had a seam down their length, joined quite precisely, though not perfectly. There was almost no variety in color, all of them entrenched in the five base colors with the exact same highlights and contrasts.

This convinced me further that these smooth creatures were crafted by intelligent beings like myself. They were simple. They did one task very well and little else, suggesting they were created for that specific purpose and nothing else. They showed signs of the tools used to create them. Other people craft images of living beings, and if my people had the knowledge of this one's inner workings, would create similar moving contraptions for our children as toys.

In short, these artifacts were the opposite of living things. When an animal creates its young, there is no sign of a guiding intelligence shaping or planning the offspring, only the parents being together and letting nature take its course. For unintelligent life, the struggle to perform this act is, unfortunately, quite merciless. To survive and sire young, a living thing needs to perform countless tasks. Those creatures that can perform all those tasks produce more like them, while those who can't die off. There is no purpose or intent behind this, just a simple, logical truth. We, as intelligent beings, create purpose and use what we can to accomplish our goals. This ability exists primarily because it has the effect of making us able to devise and pass on new ways to survive and prosper. The feeling of empowerment that comes from creating art, culture, and seeking new forms of understanding is a side effect we can enjoy.

An artifact created for a specific purpose is not restricted by the demands of life: It can be created, used, and discarded. It only needs to perform its specific purpose. If another is needed, the craftsman can just make a new one. For this reason, a tool can afford to 'die.' It has no inherent need to survive or reproduce itself.

---

Anyway, pretty well moved off the story and into an author tract. I can afford to, since it's my blog.

Of course, a lot of Creationists are going to miss the major points and speak as if I intended this one thing to be the end-all argument. This is just specifically addressing Paley's watch, replacing it with a mechanical bird alongside a real one. The problem that should have been glaring Paley and friends in the face: It's not complexity that defines design. Simplicity is often a better guide.

Another huge problem is that a watch and a living thing are very, very different. We already know about natural processes that can make new living things: Reproduction. This is a feature that watches and other human creations lack. Watches do not assemble new watches. The parts of a watch do not have any sort of self-organizing affinity. The chemicals that make up living beings do, however.

If you change this, and simulate watches that can reproduce with variation and are made of parts that have affinities, it's much easy to produce an accurate watch using evolution and a natural selection criteria that favors accurate timekeeping.

Faith is a Euphemism for Gambling

Qualia Soup and Theramin Trees said what I've taken to be the core of this idea pretty well in one of their videos.


Faith is equivalent to going to a casino, heading to a roulette table with an infinite number of numbers on the wheel, and betting on one based on a hunch. Probabilities are not considered, since one over an immeasurably large number is quite small. Books, relics, and so forth fill in the role of the "lucky" rabbit's foot.

The compulsive gamblers resent any effort to convince them to cut their losses. They even consider it a virtue to keep riding a losing streak, since they labor under the delusion that the laws of probability will bend to serve them and reward them for their stubbornness. This arrogance is encouraged to prevent change: Saying that you were wrong takes humility and courage. To a man of faith, these traits are signs of weakness. Humility cannot reside in a person who has delusions of perfection. To be humble is to acknowledge imperfection.

Science, on the other hand, is equivalent to getting a job at a stable company and doing hard, honest work in hopes of a paycheck. If the company goes bankrupt, you leave and apply for a job at a place that addresses the problems the previous one didn't.

Science plays for the best odds and knows there are no "sure things" in life: 99.9% odds means that there's a 0.1% chance you could be wrong. The fact that science-minded people know that they could be wrong means that they're willing to change if they find out they were mistaken. Humility is considered a strength because it acknowledges the need for change and improvement.

We all take on risks in this uncertain world. Science acknowledges our imperfections and works hard to minimize the dangers they pose. Science acknowledges that the universe is not limited to our self-serving imagination.

Faith is gambling on the "perfection" of your hunches. Faith is gambling on the arrogant belief that the universe is incapable of being beyond your imagination.