ChaoSkeptic

In America there are strange norms when it comes to sex. There is a constant shroud of silence when it comes to what goes on in bedrooms. Every church (and until recently even the government) constantly preached that sex is a dirty bad thing that should be saved for marriage. There is a supernatural mystique when it comes to virginity (especially for women). It is not considered a state of mind but as a physical thing that you can lose like a sock in the dryer. We even have Purity Balls where fathers and daughters worship her virginity like a fetish doll. We have to be the most sexually dysfunctional country in history.

And that's why I get a perverse thrill out of American sex studies. They have a way of ripping off the veil for everyone to see how we actually feel about sex and not just the company line we mouth when the children are around.

My favorite all time favorite study was released by the Guttmacher Institute in 2007. It was entitled "Trends in Premarital Sex in the United States, 1954–2003". The title alone makes me giddy with excitement. The most important part of the study says this:

Of those interviewed in 2002, 95% reported they had had premarital sex; 93% said they did so by age 30. Among women born in the 1940s, nearly nine in 10 did. At the same time, people are waiting longer to marry; 2005 data show median age at first marriage is just over 25 for women and 27 for men.

That's right. All of us are horny hypocrites. It is almost a guarantee that every single abstinence-only educator and pontificating preacher had sex before they were married. (Hell, your grandparents most likely had sex before marriage. Wrap your head around that!) The same people saying that sex before marriage will leave you a sad husk that no one will love anymore and that you will get every single STD simultaneously did the horizontal mambo before marriage and turned out just fine.

This is one of the reasons I've been against abstinence only education for a long time. It's not just that is scientifically proven to not work and in many instances increases the number of teen pregnancies and STD rates. It is unrealistic model of how the world works. It's an outright lie. And if you lie to kids you'll have to face the D.A.R.E. effect where kids can no longer tell the truth from the propaganda and end up making bad decisions.


And I said all that to talk about a new study by Guttmacher that came out today called "Religion and Contraceptive Use". Another great title. The key findings of this study were:

• Among all women who have had sex, 99% have ever used a contraceptive method other than natural family planning. This figure is virtually the same among Catholic women (98%).

• Among sexually active women of all denominations who do not want to become pregnant, 69% are using a highly effective method (i.e., sterilization, the pill or another hormonal method, or the IUD).

• Some 68% of Catholic women use a highly effective method, compared with 73% of Mainline Protestants and 74% of Evangelicals.

• Only 2% of Catholic women rely on natural family planning; this is true even among Catholic women who attend church once a month or more.

The big things I want to point out are that 98% of Catholic women use contraception and only 2% use the "rhythm method". 98%! Try to wrap your head around that because I can't. For those not up on Roman Catholic dogma, contraception is considered a mortal sin. Pope Paul VI called it "seriously evil". The current pope, Benedict XV, said that handing out condoms "aggravates the problems" when it comes to AIDs.

And 98% of American Catholic women are collectively saying, "Fuck the motherfucking pope". They would rather risk the fate of their soul than be told how to control their bodies. To that I say, "You go, girl!" (Do people still say that?) But I also say, "Why the hell do you put up with this shit?" Obviously a bunch of old men in dresses who've (allegedly) never had sex shouldn't be giving other people marriage advice. People need to stand up and tell them to be more realistic.

Oh, that's right! Women aren't allowed to have leadership positions in the Catholic Church. Silly me. Maybe several centuries from now they'll change their minds about the whole thing. There might not be anyone left to care at that point.

(Comic via SMBC.)


At some point in the future mankind will figure out how to live forever and I am convinced that that is what will cause the final destruction of our species. I know that sounds contradictory, but just hear me out.

Society currently has a way of refreshing itself every 20 years or so and that it called "Kill off the old fuckers and make some new babies." It's not the most efficient method in the world but it has served us well for the last several millennia. This is caused by strange bit of brain chemistry. Almost all of your beliefs about the world are set by your mid 20s. Not set like concrete but set more like a tasty jello mold. Your brain is done being bombarded with hormones from puberty, your pineal gland calcifies around the age of 23 (fnord!), and after that it is almost impossible to change someone's view of the world. Once you hit your 30s you are set in your ways and your personal narrative is a third of the way down its path.

What's good about this though is that during their teens and twenties most people are open-minded, liberal, tolerant, and willing to consider new ideas and try new experiences. Every generation says, "Let us strive to be better than our parents!" But also says, "Hey, let's not take this too far." And so, society changes by generational quanta. Things never progress steadily but in small leaps. And not always for the best but always in a new direction. Each generation has their own memes, causes, art, and beliefs that makes the culture has a whole just slightly different.

Immortality would mess this up is that we would miss out on the "Kill off the old fuckers" part. People with antiquated ideas would linger on for eternity. Just imagine your grandparents not only alive but healthy, active, of sound mind, and eager to vote. Ok, now imagine your great-grandparents alive, healthy active, of sound mind and eager to vote. And now your great-great-grandparent. And so on. Immortality would change the average age of humanity, if not the mean age. Over time young people would be forced out of the marketplace of ideas. We would have the equivalent of not only geocentricists, as in the comic at the top of the screen, but also people who still think slavery is a great idea, that women should never leave the home, and think that germs are "just a theory". (Wait, we still have the last two.)

At any rate, society would quickly stagnate. New ideas would never stand a chance. We would repeat the same memes for eternity. Nothing of interest would be produced without everyone complaining about how derivative it is. Hopefully people would refuse the immortality treatment or start to kill themselves out of sheer boredom.

You'll be excused for not noticing but the other day one of my very very old posts was hit up by a drive-by troll. In my award-winning post about Questions that Creationists Can't Answer the anonymous coward posted the following:

look up radioactive halos at halos.com
think about this:
if creationism is wrong and the bible is wrong than are we any worse for beliveing it? but what if it's right? than you have a lot to worry about. better safe than sorry!

The first part isn't even worth answering. If you want to know about the creationist claim that polonium halos somehow prove that the earth is young there is an excellent article about it on TalkOrigins.

As for the rest of that post, if you've studied theology for longer than five minutes you would recognize it as a creationist version of Pascal's Wager. The wager can be summed up as follows:

If you erroneously believe in God, you lose nothing , whereas if you correctly believe in God, you gain everything. But if you correctly disbelieve in God, you gain nothing, whereas if you erroneously disbelieve in God, you lose everything.

Obviously there are many things wrong with this. The first is the assumption that believing in God means you lose nothing. Then there is the assumption that God will reward you solely on your beliefs and not your actions (and not punish you for you simply hedging your bets). And there is the assumption that the Christian God is the correct one and not the millions of other gods and goddesses that have been worshiped since mankind first bowed to the sun.

Therefore, I have taken to come up with some new wager's of my own.

Cthulu's Wager: The god that exists may be the most malevolent being possible so it is best to worship Cthulu and hope that He eats you first instead of torturing you for eternity.

Dawkin's Wager: It is better to lack belief and do good on earth then hope that whichever god is up there rewards works and intellectual curiosity over mere belief.

Eris's Wager: All of the gods and goddesses might actually exist so it is best to worship as many as you can before you die in order that one might favor you enough to give you a VIP pass to the afterlife.

Ok, now that I have your attention... Hopefully you've been following the craziness over at Jen McCreight's Blag Hag. If not, here is a quick rundown. Last week a crazed Iranian cleric made the mistake of making a supernatural claim that could be tested. He said, "Many women who do not dress modestly ... lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes." That's right, cleavage causes earthquakes. Well, he didn't mean the cleavage that occurs between rock formations but the cleavage in a woman's bossom. (Sidenote: The term penetrative cleavage proves that all geologists are massive pervs). Jen, being the science minded person that she is, decided to put it to the test:

Sedighi claims that not dressing modestly causes earthquakes. If so, we should be able to test this claim scientifically. You all remember the homeopathy overdose?

Time for a Boobquake.

On Monday, April 26th, I will wear the most cleavage-showing shirt I own. Yes, the one usually reserved for a night on the town. I encourage other female skeptics to join me and embrace the supposed supernatural power of their breasts. Or short shorts, if that's your preferred form of immodesty. With the power of our scandalous bodies combined, we should surely produce an earthquake. If not, I'm sure Sedighi can come up with a rational explanation for why the ground didn't rumble. And if we really get through to him, maybe it'll be one involving plate tectonics.

So, who's with me? I may be a D cup, but that will probably only produce a slight tremor on its own. If you'll be joining me on twitter, use the tag #boobquake! Or join the facebook event!

Since then tremors have passed through the internet. Going through my Google Reader I see that it has been mentioned by Skepchick, Pharyngula, Unreasonable Faith, Friendly Atheist, and ERV. She's already been covered by Rev. Barry Lynn, CNN, Mashable, the Washington Post, the Chicago Sun Times, and even the New Zealand Herald. On top of that she has a completely full schedule of interviews set up during the event tomorrow (including every single Indiana based news station).

Jen has managed to set forth a skeptical quake that has reached around the globe several times over. How the hell did she do it? No one really knows. Hemant over at Friendly Atheist has several ideas as to why (pithy name, good time line, humor, youth, BOOBS!) but in the long run no one really knows why these things happen. The media is so fickle that you never know what pick up its attention. As skeptics we have to just keep hammering away until something clicks. And when your name is called all you can do is ride that dragon out until the bitter end.

And showing a bit of cleavage along the way probably doesn't hurt either.

(Make sure to follow Jen on Twitter and watch the hashtag #boobquake for updates during the day)

For some very odd reason this week is World Homeopathy Awareness Week. I don't know who gets to decide these things but there it is. To raise your awareness on what homeopathy is and how it works. Homeopathy is a form of "alternative medicine" that dilutes preparations beyond the point of usefulness while shaking the bejesus out of them. As for how it works, well It doesn't fucking work. It's based on the absurd idea that water has some magical property called "memory" and that its memory of whatever poisonous substance that was diluted to less than one molecule per liter will cure what is ailing you. Trust me, water doesn't remember shit which is probably a good thing.



Thankfully homeopathy is almost strictly a British phenomenon. I'm not entirely sure why. However, there are some homeopathic medicines sold in popular US drug stores. More often then not they are things that are alleged to treat the common cold, headaches, allergies, ear aches, or menopause. Or they are homeopathic sleep aids that contain caffeine, which the Amazing Randi made infamous.


Long story short: homeopathy is nothing but wishful thinking that relies completely on sympathetic magic married to the placebo effect. There has never been any scientific evidence to prove that it works and every proposed mechanism to explain how it works is beyond laughable. The fact that anyone would think that it works boggles my mind.


P.S. Hi, Redditors!

Thanks to my super generous wife yesterday I received an Amazon Kindle for Valentine's Day (and birthday and anniversary and Father's day and...) So far I'm loving it, but I'll have to get used to reading everything in grey-scale. As my first major purchase I selected Chris Rodda's "Liars For Jesus: The Religious Right's Alternate Version of American History" because 1) It's been on my wish list for a ridiculous amount of time 2) I don't have enough rage in my diet 3) the Kindle edition is about half the price of the paper edition and 4) I've been meaning to dive into the debate about the social studies standards in Texas and Chris's book is perfect ammunition for it.

I haven't even begun to read the book so I can't even begin to give a review but it did get me thinking about something I find interesting. Do you realize how many different branches of knowledge you have to touch to even start to be a well-rounded skeptic? Ok, here's partial list I came up with off the top of my head:

Obviously, to go against theocratic revisionists like David Barton you have to know about early American history, Enlightenment philosophy plus quite a bit about Constitutional law.

To be a Nazi Killer going up against Holocaust Deniers you have to know World War II like the back of your hand. Being fluent in German doesn't hurt either.

If you are up against anti-vaxxers, homeopaths, and various other "natural medicine" woosters you have to know about medicine, immunology, and virology. (It's usually very easy to beat them with basic chemistry though.)

If you want to kick a psychic or medium in the balls you have to know cold reading, psychology and sleight of hand tricks. It's often handy to know all the neat camera tricks too.

Because Creationists are typically very very confused about everything you have to have basic knowledge in biology, genetics, geology, paleontology, fluid mechanics, thermodynamics, physics, astrophysics, cosmology, theology, psychology, and, if they are feeling really adventurous, neuroscience.

For cryptozoology you have to know real zoology.

If you want to wade into the climate change debate you have to know the difference between climatology and meteorology. (Basic chemistry helps here too.)

For dowsers... well, you just need your eyes for that one. (Dude, I totally just saw him move his elbow!!1!)


And on top of all of that, you have to memorize the entire list of logical fallacies, know how to do your own research plus know your opponent's arguments, your arguments, and your opponent's counter-arguments. Meanwhile, all they have to do is know how to make shit up on the spot. Doesn't really seem fair now, does it?

PZ Myers did the world a favor a couple of days ago and brought it to everyone's attention that there was a great documentary recently put out about (in)famous Christian tract artist Jack Chick. Here's a quick trailer for it:



A documentary about the nuttiest form of Christianity that features "Dr. Dino" Kent Hovind AND Ivan Stang, founder of the Church of the Subgenius? Sign me the fuck up! Of course I had a moral imperative to hunt down a digital copy so I could watch it as soon as possible.

I watched it tonight and I must say that I enjoyed it. It's obviously not for everyone. If you've never read a Jack Chick in an utter state of horrormirth then you should probably skip it. For the most part it is interviews with people who happen to be ironic fans of his work and people who have worked around Chick Publications over the years. His cult followers and his "cult" followers, if you will. The stuff with Ivan Stang was obviously funny. There were also some fun animated sequences that helped bring some of his tracts to life. There was no interview with Jack himself since he is extremely reclusive. (They mentioned that no picture has been taken of him since the 1940s) Overall they did a good job piecing together as much information as they could out of the sparse details they could gather about Jack Chick's life and works. They mentioned his humble beginnings in the suburbs of LA. His brief time in the military and fighting at the Battle of Okinawa. How he built his "publishing empire" from the ground up. The part I found most interesting was the conspiracy theorists that influenced him heavily in the 70s and 80s: John Todd, Alberto Rivera, and Rebecca Brown.

I guess the main reason I have this morbid curiosity with Jack Chick is because I grew up around people who believed a lot of the stuff he was preaching. I was the member of a Methodist church as a teenager and I remember seeing Chick Tracts around all of the time. Hell, Rebecca Brown did most of her preaching less than 40 miles from where I am right now. I couldn't help but end up with Jack Chick Shrapnel in my brain.

Then again, it is hard not to see Chick Tracts everywhere. According to the film there have been three quarters of a billion tracts published in 100 languages over the last fifty years. He is easily the most published comic book author in the history of the world.

The scariest part of the movie for me was when Kent Hovind pointed out that Jack Chick has probably converted more people to Christianity than anyone in history. And I can't think of anyone that would come close to him. Maybe Billy Graham, maybe Emperor Constantine if you want to stretch it. That scares me because the Christianity that Jack Chick believes in is the most twisted version you could think of. Just as dogs start to look like their owners, gods look, think and act exactly like their owners. The god of Jack Chick is paranoid, vindictive, bigoted and seems to hate 90% of His creation. In Jack Chick's universe there are evil demons around every corner ready to posses unsuspecting teenagers. Witches covens meet on a regular basis to listen to rock n' roll music and sacrifice babies. Satan controls everything on this planet including the Catholic, Mormon and Jehovah's Witness churches. (Don't even get him started on the Muslims.) He's even attacking your children through Dungeons n' Dragons and corrupted science with evolution. To make matters worse, at The End God decides to throw everyone who doesn't say the Magic Words into a Lake of Fire for all of eternity. In essence, it is Christian through the prism of a paranoid schizophrenic.

Kinda makes you glad that Jack Chick's god doesn't exist. Haw haw haw.

Arguing with a creationist is like playing Russian Roulette without bullets. It's pointless, & you eventually WANT to blow your brains out. - George Hrab

Ok, I really really didn't want to do this but it has been eating away at my brain since Friday so I guess I have no choice. Some of you may recall my post from almost exactly a month ago about Russ Pulliam's opinion column in the Indianapolis Star about evolution. I got some link love from both Exploring Our Matrix and Clever Badger over it. (Greetings if you are one of the people from there.)

On Friday Russ posted a follow-up piece in the Indy Star and I really want to do a rebuttal... but there is nothing to rebut. Now, I'm not saying that everything Russ wrote is correct, I'm saying that there is no substance to his column. But I guess I could point out a few of his mistakes because I've got time to kill and the scratching in my brain won't stop until I get it out of my system. For instance, he gets things very wrong in the first sentence:

I recently wrote an objection to the belief that Darwin's theory can be used an explanation for the origins of the universe.

I'm glad you object to that Russ, because Darwin wasn't trying to explain the origins of the universe. If you had read even the title of his book you would notice that it was about the Origin of the Species. The theory of evolution explains the diversity of life on earth. Nothing more, nothing less. The origin of the universe would be in the astrophysics classroom down the hall to the left. Ask them to introduce you to Georges Lemaître and Edwin Hubble.

Furthermore, Mr. Pulliam writes:

Many of Darwin's followers have taken his theory as the ultimate road map for where humans came from millions of years ago. They occasionally wander out of the science building and over to the philosophy and theology departments. They suggest, for example, that romantic bonding comes from natural selection. It's an interesting theory, and natural selection may have a part in romantic attractions, but it's also speculative.

First, saying Darwin's followers is just ridiculous. No one follows Darwin like a saint. Well, almost no one. He was a fallible man who had some very insightful ideas on biology. However, he knew absolutely nothing about DNA due to the time he lived in and couldn't have possibly known about such important concepts as genetic drift and horizontal gene transfer. No one takes his word as scripture. To imply so is just creationist dog-whistle language meant to make science look as dogmatic as religion.

Secondly, it appears that Russ wants us to limit scientific research to topics that make him feel comfortable. Why shouldn't science be able to research into topics like human sexuality and monogamy specifically? Why wouldn't natural selection (and sexual selection, obviously) play a huge part in the development of human bonding? If natural selection has nothing to do with it then why do we see similar sexual habits in our close biological relatives? And finally, does he have any other suggestions for how human sexuality came to be other than "God created them, male and female"?

He then goes onto mumble something about Dawkins. Yawn... I'll pick it back up just after he quotes another blogger:

Butler University religion professor James McGrath wants me to bone up on modern science. "Perhaps Pulliam's own ill-reasoned article is itself evidence that reason cannot be trusted, that we are too prone to self-deception. Yet even so, it can be argued that scientific methods do a better job of helping us avoid such self-deception and poor reasoning than anything else."

McGrath is the man behind Exploring Our Matrix, btw. Smart fellow who, unlike Pulliam, understands that science isn't a thing or a person or an organization. Science is a verb. It is a process. Or more accurately, it is a toolbox of processes. Pure reason can be very helpful but it can also be very deceiving. That's why you test, re-test, and then re-test some more to be sure. Then you send your work out to someone else to test it again. Get rid of as much bias and unnecessary variables as possible along the way. Yes, this process isn't always perfect but it's the best toolbox we have at this time.

Pulliam's response to McGrath's letter:

Perhaps, but scientific methods don't help when it comes to questions about purpose in life and ethics.

Well, duh! Science isn't about purpose or ethics. That would be the philosophy department, down the hall and to the right. Ask them to introduce you to Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. (Check out Søren Kierkegaard while you are at it. He's my personal favorite.) Anyways, Science isn't about explaining the why. Science is about explaining the how. Science is an attempt to map the natural world and the forces within it. Occasionally it will rear its head into the ethics classroom and yell "Hang on a minute" but only when the ethicists start straying away from reality too much.

I don't really have much to say about the rest of his column after that other than to say that I'm jealous that Clever Badger got a mention but that I didn't. I mean, c'mon! I made the exact same point that he grossly oversimplified evolution as amoebas changing into men. Would it have hurt you to slip my name in there? It would help your word count and my hit counter.

Also, it is good to admit that he isn't a Young Earth Creationist so at least he has half a brain. It would be nice in the future if he would just come out and say what his position on all of this is rather than just saying that science can't answer everything. Debating someone who refuses to state their position is like trying to eat jello with a fork. How can I hit you if you won't stand still, Russ???

Hopefully this will be my last post about Russ Pulliam. I don't want to turn this into a series.

The Yes Men are at it yet again! This time they found a hilarious way to pwn the US Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber has been in the news a lot lately because they've lost several key members, including Apple, PG&E, Levi Strauss & Co, and Nike, over their non-stance on climate change. To help improve the Chamber's image, the Yes Men decided to throw them a press conference at the National Press Club.

In a dramatic announcement at the National Press Club today, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce reversed its position on climate change policy, and promised to immediately cease lobbying against the Kerry-Boxer bill.

Not.

Within minutes of the Chamber's dramatic announcement, it was revealed that the "Chamber spokesperson" was an impostor, and the press conference an elaborate hoax designed by activists to draw attention to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's "troglodytic" fight against climate change legislation. At the close of the news conference, a visibly rattled Chamber of Commerce spokesperson (Eric Wohlschlegel) barged into the room and declared the event a fraud.

Of course this was all caught on video:


Plus coverage by the Rachel Maddow show:

I was sorta disappointed by this one because there was no humorous angle to it other than having competing spokesmen trying to address the confused press at the exact same time. (I'm sure there was a better/funnier plan in place before the real spokesman showed up.) However, if it makes the US Chamber of Commerce readdress their stance on climate change then I'm all for it. Climate change is a settled scientific fact at this point. The only thing debatable at this point is how much is going to change, how fast, and what humans can do to slow it down. It's understandable the USCC wants to protect their business from over-regulation but there will be no business if we don't have a planet.

On that subject, here is a very handy link on How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic.

Yeah, I know that I just posted a QualiaSoup video about two weeks ago but this is another good one that needs to be seen. It drive homes a point I have been saying for years: All of the faith in the world doesn't mean anything unless you have the evidence to back it up.

Here is another great video from Qualia Soup, this time about probability, coincidences and how people usually misunderstand them.

Nigeria has a serious problem with witchcraft. Or more specifically, they have a problem with crazy people thinking that other people are doing witchcraft. Children are being abandoned, tortured and even killed everyday for simply crying at night or getting sick. You know that superstition has taken a strong hold when people are willing to sacrifice their own children.

The Nigerian Humanist Association and Stepping Stones Nigeria are doing their best to stop the insanity but Helen Ukpabio and her band of religious thugs aren't having it. When Leo Igwe, Executive Secretary of the Nigerian Humanist Movement, decided to have a conference called "Child Rights and Witchcraft" in Calabar last month Helen and 150 members of her Liberty Foundation Gospel Ministries decided to break it up:

As the anti-witchcraft conference began at around 10.30am, the religious protesters dressed in orange raided the venue and began protesting loudly. The extremists were carrying a number of banners with slogans such as, "This protest is organised by The Akwa Ibom State Government", "We give freedom to the witches" and "Stepping Stone is not a registered organisation".

Among the other delegates attacked, Leo Igwe had his glasses smashed and his bag, phone and camera stolen by the mob, who were alternately singing and aggressively disrupting the conference. After an hour and a half, the police turned up and dispersed the mob. One person was arrested.

Speaking after the event Leo said: "The conference was a peaceful meeting for people to openly debate what could be done to prevent the abuse of child rights linked to the belief in witchcraft. This attack by Helen Ukpabio’s supporters once again highlights the depravity of this so-called "woman of God". Such false prophets should be immediately arrested and prosecuted under the child rights act".

Video from their protest has been uploaded to Youtube. It's rather eerie to see people act so violently while singing Christian hymns.


There's an online petition (yeah, yeah, I know) started asking the Nigeria government to bring Helen Ukpabio to justice. Let's hope they listen before more children are killed.

(Hat tip to the Friendly Atheist)

"Debating creationists on the topic of evolution is rather like trying to play chess with a pigeon; it knocks the pieces over, craps on the board, and flies back to its flock to claim victory." - Scott D. Weitzenhoffer

If you know me well you probably know that I've been following the evolution-creationism "debate" pretty devoutly for the last 4 years or so. I don't know why. It's usually like a rather nasty car crash with steel twisted every way. The creationists mindset is some rather interesting head space though. The amount of cognitive dissonance and outright denialism contained in one hardcore Creationist is more than enough to keep a whole team of psychologists and neuro-scientists busy for several lifetimes.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, perhaps) I've never been one to directly engage in prolonged debate with Creationists. Mainly because 1) research is hard 2) I'm allergic to direct conflict 3) I don't particularly like bashing my head against the wall. Instead I've always sat on the sidelines, cheered on the good guys, and occasionally tossed a very sharp object into the ring.

That being said, I have actually picked up some knowledge along the way. For instance, there are certain questions that will stop almost all Creationists in their tracks and make them do an abrupt 90° turn (because we all know that them doing a 180° is impossible). The one thing Creationists are good at is making rationalizations that they dub "apologetics". There are certain things that they can't answer though such as:

1) Why can we see starlight from millions of light years away? (Otherwise known as the Starlight Problem.) The only apologetics I have seen for this involve completely changing the laws of physics beyond repair or to invoke the Trickster God of Omphalos.

2) Why doesn't the Institute for Creation Research do any research? Why hasn't the Discovery Institute discovered anything? So far all either of these organizations have contributed is apologetics, public relations and legal muscle. Neither Creationist organization has ever put forth any new scientific information. They have never put forth a scientific model to do any tests around. There have only been a handful of Creation "scientists" that have done peer-reviewed work and none of these papers involved a creationist model. Their excuse is that Big Science is blackballing all of them but that leads us to our next question...

3) How far does the Big Science conspiracy go? Currently more than half of all humans in the industrial nations agree with evolution. We can wave that away by saying most of those are being fooled by the evolution "hoax". However we still have millions of scientists in the last hundred years that understand biology and agree with evolution. According to creationists they are just keeping their mouth shut because overturning an entire branch of science and winning a Nobel Prize would be too stressful. Add to that the fact that most government scientific agencies (and the entire Judicial branch of the US government) are helping prop up the theory. Then take into account the fact that many drug companies use the theory of evolution to develop new drugs (here is where Big Science intersects Big Pharma). And don't forget the oil and mineral companies that use non-Flood geology to discovery veins of the good stuff. Well, then you are talking about the biggest conspiracy in the history of mankind. It would include hundreds of millions of people over the last 150 years without one single person blowing the whistle. Of course, we can always hand wave this away by saying "Satan did it".

4) Why aren't there more Nazis in Scandinavia? One of the main theses of the movie "Expelled" was that Darwinism directly lead to the Germans killing millions of people. In fact, Ben Stein very clearly said in an interview that "Science leads you to killing people." And yet today the countries that have the highest percentage of people that accept evolution are the most peaceful. In the Scandinavian countries more than 75% accept the modern theory of evolution yet they aren't committing mass genocides. I wonder why this is.

5) Why do we patterns in the genetic sequence of all living things? Why is it that humans share more than 90% of our DNA with the other Great Apes? Why do we see the same exact pattern when it comes to endogenous retroviruses? I've always heard the excuse of "Same designer, same design" but that doesn't even make sense. Why would the same designer reuse the same bits in a specific pattern that makes it look like everything is related in a nested hierarchy? Why would he bother to put all of those retroviruses in in the first place? Is this another appeal to the Trickster God?

6) This one is specifically for Intelligent Design proponents: How can we gain knowledge of the Designer? What is the possibility for there being more than one Designer? And while we are at it, is there a possibility that the Designer isn't omnipotent, omniscient or benevolent? Could it have been aliens? At this point they will give away the game and reveal that Intelligent Design isn't really science, it's just rewarming the old natural theology arguments from the 1800s and using cooler jargon.

Ok, that is more than enough questions from me. If you want to see the master list of creationist claims and how to debunk all of them go over to Talk Origins. I'm pretty sure that they have over a thousand by now.

From the indeterminate location of Cabaret Brainwash, Floating Republic of Mu, Left Coast, USA comes SHUTUPYUOAREANIDIOT.com

Cabal leader JohnnyFuckingBrainwash lay's out the manifesto thusly:

Shut up. Really. You’re an idiot. You have no fucking clue what you’re talking about, and yet there you go, spouting off like you’re entitled to an opinion.

I don’t expect brilliance from you. I don’t expect eloquence. Shit, I don’t even expect you to be right. All I ask is that you have some fucking clue before you open your mouth. I don’t care if you pull ideas out of your ass- just don’t inflict them on me. Please.

Look, you don’t get swine flu from pork chops. That bad ice storm last winter doesn’t disprove global warming. Reagan didn’t defeat the Soviet Union, Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, and “god” does not appear once in the US Constitution.

Shut up! You are an idiot.

I'm still not 100% sure what the site is going to be about but the front page of the blog currently has an anti-anti-vaccinationist post by Nigel, a pair of anti-George Will posts, and an anti-abstinence only education post by Bus Mall Socialist Ranter. Looks like some place I'd fit in. I've signed up for an account there. I'll try to cross-post some of my stuff over there if I think it fits. It could end up being a really cool place for us Discordians who are liberally and skeptically minded to come together.

(Hat tip to Telarus and Nigel)

I'm a couple of days late, but it looks like the Discovery Institute did finally decide to respond to the challenge put to them by Concordance (and Thunderf00t). Kinda.. sorta... not really. Long story short, Casey Luskin responded by basically saying that the Intelligent Design theory is extra special and should never, under any circumstance be tested. At least, I think that was what he is saying. Luskin has never been very good at writing in very clear language, IMHO. I guess that is what happens when you send a lawyer to do a biologist's job.

William Dembski, the "Isaac Newton of information theory" *snort*, on the other hand decided to try his hand at the Common Designer gambit. He quote-mines some hay from an evolution for dummies book, builds a strawman and promptly lights it on fire. The argument basically goes that animals that seem similar only appear that way because they were made by the same "Designer" (wink, wink). Forget for the moment that this doesn't explain things like endogenous retroviruses, homologies, and the twin-nested hierarchy that all living things fall into. This argument should be considered sacrilege by almost every theist. This arguments puts the "Designer" into a very small box. If this "Designer" is of the omnipotent variety then it should be trivial for "It" to similar creations with very different genetic codes. Plus the fact that the codes for similar creatures fall into a specific hierarchy where it appears that the creatures evolved without any supernatural assistance make this "Designer" into a trickster that wants humans to chase their own tails when it comes to the natural world. As a Discordian, I have no issue with this but I doubt it's the message the Discovery Institute wants to send out.

Thankfully Thunderf00t has put up a better explanation to why the "Common Designer/Common Design" argument fails mightily.



So in summary, the Discovery Institute feels like it's not their job to put forth any actual evidence for the intelligent design hypothesis. They seem to think that if that they muddy the waters about naturalistic evolution enough that they will somehow win by default. To that I will quote philosopher Francisco Ayala at the McLean v. Arkansas trial almost 30 years ago:

“My dear young man, negative criticisms of evolutionary theory, even if they carried some weight, are utterly irrelevant to the question of the validity or legitimacy of creation science. Surely you realize that not being Mr. Williams in no way entails being Mr. Ayala!"

I'm sure most of you know Ray Comfort. I know I've mentioned him and his boy sidekick Kurt Cameron several times before. He is arguably the worst Christian apologist in the history of the world. So bad that Poe's Law kicks in and you have no idea if he is being serious or not. (I still have an inkling that he is a Black Flag troll purposely trying to make Christians look stupid but I'll save that for another time.) Anywho, someone named TaishaMcGee has decided to fashion a suitable tribute to Ray-Ray out of felt and thread and put it up for sale on Etsy. Without further ado I present to you the Ray Comfort Tampon Holder (complete with banana):



As she says:

This is an Art Piece I created as a reaction to Ray Comfort's blatant and willful ignorance. If you don't "get" this piece, that's a sign that you still have your faith in humanity. I realize this piece is somewhat anti-feminist, but so is Ray. Profits from the sale of this item will go to a program supporting young female paleontologists. Tampons ARE included.

And it can be your for the low low price of $10 (plus S&H). Act now! Operators are standing by!!!


(Hat tip to Unreasonable Faith)

(I seriously hate doing two videos on evolution right in a row but what are ya gonna do?)

Rep. Mike Pence from Indiana's 6th District (roughly two over from the one I'm living in) was asked a fairly innocuous question by MSNBC's Chris Matthews: Do you believe in evolution? Should be a fairly easy one to answer. It should be as easy to answer as "Do you believe in gravity?" or "Do you believe in the theory of relativity?" But, alas, nothing is ever that easy in American politics.



Pence goes all over the map talking about global warming and stem cells and doesn't answer the question. Matthews does a great job of nailing him on the fact that (mosbunall) Republicans are actively anti-science. They have been wrong on stem cells, climate change and evolution. They almost always choose ideology over reality. I'm glad their party is spending a little time in the wilderness to think things over a bit. Maybe it'll give them to some time to see that fighting science is always a losing battle.

Dear Creationists,

Please die of the swine flu.

Hugs and Kisses,
Bill Maher



(Hat tip to the Friendly Atheist)

This viral video has hit just about every single other Skeptic site so I guess it's my turn to post it. It's a great video from YouTuber QualiaSoup who also did the amazing "Instruction Manual for Life" clip. This one is about the "you are just closed-minded" gambit that advocates for the supernatural and the paranormal like to throw at anyone who questions their beliefs. He makes a very good point that asking for solid evidence doesn't make you closed minded, it makes you open-minded.

I... just... I have no words to explain this. It's just too surreal. You just need to see this documentary about "Objectum Sexuals", people who fall in love with inanimate objects. This clip includes a professional archer who fell in and out of love with her bow and then decided to marry the Eiffel Tower. All seven parts are on YouTube but I'll just post part one here.

(NOTE: The original video that was here was taken down by YouTube for copyright issues. Here is a slightly edited version of the show. Hopefully this one will stay on YouTube.)