Yeah, free book from a crackpot. A dead crackpot at that. Tomotom Stifung apparently wants to enlighten me on "pro-evo" thinking and help me to adjust my life towards the cosmic evolution of universe.
http://www.amazon.com/Pro-Evolution-Guideline-Age-Joy/dp/3952251909
He's apparently atheistic and all newagey and denies actual biological evolution because it's "against all odds". This cosmic evolution cannot be the chance evolution of biology, because if it were, then everywhere in the universe would have different laws and forms. However, since everywhere seems to have similar universal laws of physics as Earth, it must be the case that there is universal evolution to the universe. I mean, if biological evolution were possible, then mathematics constants like phi (the golden ratio) wouldn't be the same everywhere.
From this he supposes there are ways to act in favor of this universal force and against this universal force. And acting against it is evil and in favor of it will cause joy. Then he lays out a mediocre worldview couching his agnosticism in terms of pro-evo and his opposition to abortion except to control population, protect the life of the mother. Or that the point of parenting is to raise kids to act in a pro-evo fashion. Or to law, only pro-evo things are the standard for law and its interpretation. Or women, who should in the future be treated equally and should act in a pro-evo manner and support men when they act in a pro-evo manner.
He also gives a great commandment "Steadfastly think and act pro-evo: establish pro-evo goals, tasks and modes of behavior for all areas and in every situation of life - and energetically realize them."
All in all, this book is the the intellectual equivalent of "buy low and sell high, because that's what the universe wants." It might sound good in places but it's entirely pointless and other than defining "pro-evo" as that which furthers your own evolution. We can see what these things are by judging the absolute moral standard. Things are pro-evo and in tune with the other forms if they are "right, good, sensible, and valuable." As if what is right or good or sensible or of value aren't entirely dependent on your sense of rightness, goodness, sensibility, or values. "Do what's right, the universe wants you to, and it will make you happy." So in the future we'll stop dying and AI will come around to save humanity, and it doesn't matter about God so long as you keep doing what is pro-evo.
This great "advice" is absolutely pointless as it is dependent on itself. It's akin to saying "buy low, sell high". Sure, if you did buy low and sell high, you'd make a lot of money. But how can you really figure out what is low and what is high? You can't tell at the time whether this point is the low point or if this point is the high point. You may buy the stock before the floor fell out or sell at the point before the stock skyrockets. You don't know. And without a valid method to actually derive morality this little book is a bunch of pointless nonsense wrapped in the bitter patina of evolution denial, misunderstanding, and new aged nonsense.
Showing posts with label Reviews. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Reviews. Show all posts
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Did Darwin Kill God, Part 1: Religion
So, I managed to watch a copy of Did Darwin Kill God, put out by the BBC. Where Conor Cunningham walks around with a bizarre view of the world making outlandish claims and being utterly and completely wrong about everything from every side. This 'philosopher and theologian' (perhaps only worthy of the second title) tried to force an utterly and completely stupid set of arguments and insinuations down our throats for the length of the program. It was utterly disappointing, not simply because it was completely wrong but because it was a good question which if properly explored would have been absolutely delightful.
The debate has been hijacked by extremists... cue Richard Dawkins, the flagbearer of Ultradarwinists! Cunningham must be uninformed that there actually is something called ultradarwinism and it heavily surrounds the idea that Darwinian evolution would produce no junk DNA. That it would have every nucleotide in our genetic code useful for something, it's fairly and utterly debunked and the only actual flashes you get of it come from creationists who suppose that that is what evolution demands and therefore junk DNA disproves evolution. What scientific support there was for the idea and assumption vanished decades ago. He uses the term to be the same to as the term "Darwinian Fundamentalist" as he also uses later on in the program.
Conor believes that Christ was risen from the dead but Creationists are wrong to read Genesis literally. So apparently Christ died to free everybody from original sin originating from a figurative story. So spends the first half of the program hammering on the idea that Christians never *really* believed Genesis. He does this by lying through his teeth, whitewashing history, and pointing out that science disproves much of Genesis so clearly nobody could have believed it.
His arguments throughout are paperthin and anybody with a cursory understanding of history and the arguments and events involved will easily detect a large array of various problems with his arguments.
He starts off by pointing out that Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 are contradictory, so clearly it's all figurative. Philo suggested that the Bible always has two meanings and there's some allegorical sub-meaning. Clearly, because there were some apologetics even very early on it must be the case that the 'Tillich-ish everything is figurative' explanation must be right. This is absolutely dishonest. Philo was not widely accepted and the insinuation that early attempts to rectify Genesis with proper science means that nobody took it literally is worse than even an outright lie.
While it is certainly that the first chapter is far more outlined and far more detailed it doesn't mean that they are allegorical or descriptive of the fallibility of man or how ex nihlo was a gift from God. There are some changes in the order between the two versions, but the standard apologetic is probably correct: Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 are the same story with Genesis 2 going into more detail about Adam and Eve. This doesn't remotely suggest that it is therefore allegory than the fact that the Prologue in Romeo and Juliet quickly tells the entire story you're about to see makes Romeo and Juliet allegory.
If Cunningham wishes to argue that a few odd contradictions between two different versions means it's allegorically perhaps he'd like to read the Gospels side by side! It's telling the same story with varying details... this clearly means that everybody reads it as if it's false, right?
To defend this indefensible claim he suggests that Augustine agrees with him. While Augustine did suggest that the Bible should not be treated like a science book, that doesn't remotely suggest that he thought it was metaphor. He just said they should avoid the parts that are scientifically wrong.
Augustine was saying that they should keep the parts that are clearly wrong on the DL. Not that they aren't part of Genesis or that Genesis isn't how the universe was made. Just that some parts are clearly wrong and don't scare off the converts by sounding like an idiot when it comes to these parts. It's not scientifically accurate and you should try to avoid sounding like a dumbass in front of the potential converts. Augustines explanation was that God just didn't share those details with us because they weren't important:
God knew how the skies worked, but simply didn't teach men because they don't need to know how the skies work, they need to know how to get saved. You don't need to be curious about the world or to progress in understanding. All you need is salvation, and the Bible is all you need to be saved. God didn't include a lot of science in the Bible because the Bible is about getting saved not understanding the world.
Cunningham then makes the claim that many of the Church fathers were transmutationalists. I find this utterly unbelievable and frankly considering how loose and fast he plays with the facts, think it is largely false.
There were a great number of scientific arguments from God and quite often the argument from design and perponderence of evidence fell squarely at the feet of religion. The early evolutionists and transmutationalists like Anaxamander and others had completely nonsensical theories about life progressing, whereas religious defenses from scientific points of view such as those of Galen and others were straightforward and showed that life was simply too complex to happen in the ways suggested by the early evolutionists. The early church fathers were often dismissive of science and scientific virtues but others were scientifically minded and they too were largely religious.
Cunningham is suggesting that nobody ever treated the Bible as literal because many of the early church fathers didn't treat the Bible as scientific. They still argued that that was how God made man, but that the science wasn't needed. It was the way to salvation and science doesn't help with salvation.
Early church fathers dismissed the couple little snafus that cropped up in the centuries after the Bible was written by pointing saying it wasn't written to convey science but to convey what God wanted us to know to be saved.
Cunningham draws this out to imply that they would be absolutely fine dismissing every damned word of Genesis as being false. This is completely unacceptable. Dismissing a few silly things like calling the moon a lesser light when really it reflects light from the sun, is forgivable because God just didn't want to share science with man, only salvation. Using this to conclude that, therefore, the Church fathers would be okay with reading it all as absolute fiction is not acceptable.
"Avoid the silly parts when you're trying to convert people" != "It's all bullshit".
Usher believed the Bible. He calculated the start of the universe as 4004BC, this "eccentric speculation" as Cunningham calls it is actually very robust. Usher, to his credit, did the math correctly. The Bible actually does give all the dates needed to make the calculation. Cunningham dismisses this as a bizarre and freakish misappropriation of the Bible because the Bible should be read as something false rather than something true and nobody has ever believed it. Usher is an anomaly. If you don't realize the utter idiocy of this, you need to hit the books.
Victorians had fossils and had uncovered dinosaurs, so clearly they would avoided doing anything as silly as interpreting Genesis literally. This middle of the line claim seems a bit stupid on a number of levels. Cunningham suggests that dinosaurs and fossils didn't contradict Genesis (because nobody really believed Genesis), rather it kept Christians on the straight and narrow of not really believing Genesis.
However, those fossils did contradict Genesis and the theory of extinction took a good while to become accepted. It was widely expected that these large fossil animals had to be alive somewhere (they survived the Ark after all) and it wasn't until we explored a lot of the world that it started dawning on people that they were dead and gone. It took a while to convince very influential and brilliant geologists that there never was a global flood. They believed Genesis literally and it took a large mass of evidence to pry those beliefs away from the scientific establishment. There's a reason why history starts in the Middle East around 4000 BC, because it use to start with the Bible. There's a reason why human fossils and primitive migrations aren't taught in history class (they are classified as prehistoric because they occurred before history that started with the Bible).
Simply because some of the early church fathers were okay with the moon not emitting light itself, doesn't mean that they would be fine with all life on this planet evolving over billions of years.
Cunningham is lying himself into a corner, suggesting that dinosaurs and other things that contradict Genesis are actually evidence in favor of his theory that the mainstream understanding was to 'read-Genesis-as-false'. His argument seems to be that Genesis has always been false, so when a scientific explanations come around and take huge chunks out of Genesis that's fine. Sometimes better than fine because it shows how obvious it must be that it wasn't actually read as literal.
When Origin of Species came out, it explained the intricacy, development, design, and understanding of life and demolished Genesis... or so Cunningham tells us we've been told. But, Cunningham has been arguing for the last 18 minutes that nobody ever read Genesis literally! Not Philo who was unpopular and non-influential, not Augustine who suggested maybe if you're trying to convert people you should read the silly bits, not Victorian England which already had plenty of stuff that contradicted Genesis. So why would anybody make this outlandish claim (other than having read any bit of the debates and arguments going on at the time).
However, England was going through the Industrial Revolution and a new idea of God came around about God who's main proponent was William Paley who compared life to a watch. And argued that it was so complex it could only have been made by God. --- Cunningham is so utterly full of shit. -- First off Paley 18th century, not 19th century, the argument had nothing to do with the industrial revolution and the argument was very old (several thousand years). Hume in the 17th century (writing before Paley) addressed the argument in depth in Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. Paley was required reading when Darwin went to college and rightly so. Darwin himself was very influenced by Paley and the parts that Paley failed to explain were the parts that troubled Darwin the most and helped him come to the conclusions he did. Why should each island have a different set of nearly identical finches or turtles or lizards?
The argument was and still is quite compelling. Basically Paley outlines all the rather amazing bits and things in life today and says 'show me how this could possibly happen without a designer, how could you possibly do any of this marvelous detail without God?', to which Darwin responded: 'here's how'.
The argument from design was not only widespread but it was the foremost theory as to how life could have possibly originated. When Galen challenged the evolutionists of the 2nd century, he did so by showing the intricacy for which no theory of evolution could account. The argument from design is *still* the best argument for God to ever be made (it falls short on a number of points but still clearly ranks best) and it was the foremost explanation for thousands of years and the fact that it went hand in hand with religion is actually fairly moot. Paley is more an explanation of life than an argument for God.
"Darwin killed God, but only Paley's God, who was at odds with the founding fathers of the Church." Conor Cunningham is a lying stupid piece of shit. That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. It's insulting to Darwin, Paley, and the Early Church fathers. I have much respect for each of these three groups and the suggestion the Cunningham makes is wrong on a number of levels. Putting Paley as a silly-misguided footnote is beyond pathetic, beyond dishonest, and missing a very valuable set of points.
Cunningham now cites some apologetics start to develop concerning evolution by natural selection in the church. As these apologists suggest that Darwinism doesn't necessarily lead to atheism, clearly it must be true. We are treated to the idea that if there's an apologetic for something it simply must be true! They are doing exactly what Augustine suggested they should do, when some embarrassing bits of science come up and make your religion look silly, sweep it under the rug as best you can.
Darwin lost his faith because his daughter died not because of evolution. While this is clearly true, that his daughter's death lead to his lost of faith, it isn't true that evolution played no role. His ignoring the what Richard Dawkins so aptly noted: Evolution allows one to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. This is the sense in which Darwin killed God. This glanced over point, should have been the core of the program. Evolution doesn't lead a person to atheism, but it lets their theism lapse without any nagging thoughts. I'll come back to it in Part 3.
He glances over a later copy of Origin which included the word "Creator" at the end due to the public outcry that Cunningham suggests never happened. If nobody cared up until then why would do people think they did... because, "the war had not yet begun."
It's really that the battle started in the US as the Scopes trial and had "nothing to do with science or religion and everything to do with politics and morality!" Really? Cunningham at this point seems to try to outdo himself on the stupidometer. When the scopes trial started everybody was shocked, SHOCKED, because they all accepted evolution... THE STUPID IT BURNS!
Part 2... coming soon.
The debate has been hijacked by extremists... cue Richard Dawkins, the flagbearer of Ultradarwinists! Cunningham must be uninformed that there actually is something called ultradarwinism and it heavily surrounds the idea that Darwinian evolution would produce no junk DNA. That it would have every nucleotide in our genetic code useful for something, it's fairly and utterly debunked and the only actual flashes you get of it come from creationists who suppose that that is what evolution demands and therefore junk DNA disproves evolution. What scientific support there was for the idea and assumption vanished decades ago. He uses the term to be the same to as the term "Darwinian Fundamentalist" as he also uses later on in the program.
Conor believes that Christ was risen from the dead but Creationists are wrong to read Genesis literally. So apparently Christ died to free everybody from original sin originating from a figurative story. So spends the first half of the program hammering on the idea that Christians never *really* believed Genesis. He does this by lying through his teeth, whitewashing history, and pointing out that science disproves much of Genesis so clearly nobody could have believed it.
His arguments throughout are paperthin and anybody with a cursory understanding of history and the arguments and events involved will easily detect a large array of various problems with his arguments.
He starts off by pointing out that Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 are contradictory, so clearly it's all figurative. Philo suggested that the Bible always has two meanings and there's some allegorical sub-meaning. Clearly, because there were some apologetics even very early on it must be the case that the 'Tillich-ish everything is figurative' explanation must be right. This is absolutely dishonest. Philo was not widely accepted and the insinuation that early attempts to rectify Genesis with proper science means that nobody took it literally is worse than even an outright lie.
While it is certainly that the first chapter is far more outlined and far more detailed it doesn't mean that they are allegorical or descriptive of the fallibility of man or how ex nihlo was a gift from God. There are some changes in the order between the two versions, but the standard apologetic is probably correct: Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 are the same story with Genesis 2 going into more detail about Adam and Eve. This doesn't remotely suggest that it is therefore allegory than the fact that the Prologue in Romeo and Juliet quickly tells the entire story you're about to see makes Romeo and Juliet allegory.
If Cunningham wishes to argue that a few odd contradictions between two different versions means it's allegorically perhaps he'd like to read the Gospels side by side! It's telling the same story with varying details... this clearly means that everybody reads it as if it's false, right?
"Reading the Genesis as myth and metaphor is not a modern trend, this has always been the mainstream view." - FUCK YOU, LIAR!
To defend this indefensible claim he suggests that Augustine agrees with him. While Augustine did suggest that the Bible should not be treated like a science book, that doesn't remotely suggest that he thought it was metaphor. He just said they should avoid the parts that are scientifically wrong.
It not infrequently happens that something about the earth, about the sky, about other elements of this world, about the motion and rotation or even the magnitude and distances of the stars, about definite eclipses of the sun and moon, about the passage of years and seasons, about the nature of animals, of fruits, of stones, and of other such things, may be known with the greatest certainty by reasoning or by experience, even by one who is not a Christian. It is too disgraceful and ruinous, though, and greatly to be avoided, that he [the non-Christian] should hear a Christian speaking so idiotically on these matters, and as if in accord with Christian writings, that he might say that he could scarcely keep from laughing when he saw how totally in error they are. In view of this and in keeping it in mind constantly while dealing with the book of Genesis, I have, insofar as I was able, explained in detail and set forth for consideration the meanings of obscure passages, taking care not to affirm rashly some one meaning to the prejudice of another and perhaps better explanation.
Augustine was saying that they should keep the parts that are clearly wrong on the DL. Not that they aren't part of Genesis or that Genesis isn't how the universe was made. Just that some parts are clearly wrong and don't scare off the converts by sounding like an idiot when it comes to these parts. It's not scientifically accurate and you should try to avoid sounding like a dumbass in front of the potential converts. Augustines explanation was that God just didn't share those details with us because they weren't important:
In short, it must be said that our authors knew the truth about the nature of the skies, but it was not the intention of the Spirit of God, who spoke through them, to teach men anything that would not be of use to them for their salvation.
God knew how the skies worked, but simply didn't teach men because they don't need to know how the skies work, they need to know how to get saved. You don't need to be curious about the world or to progress in understanding. All you need is salvation, and the Bible is all you need to be saved. God didn't include a lot of science in the Bible because the Bible is about getting saved not understanding the world.
Cunningham then makes the claim that many of the Church fathers were transmutationalists. I find this utterly unbelievable and frankly considering how loose and fast he plays with the facts, think it is largely false.
There were a great number of scientific arguments from God and quite often the argument from design and perponderence of evidence fell squarely at the feet of religion. The early evolutionists and transmutationalists like Anaxamander and others had completely nonsensical theories about life progressing, whereas religious defenses from scientific points of view such as those of Galen and others were straightforward and showed that life was simply too complex to happen in the ways suggested by the early evolutionists. The early church fathers were often dismissive of science and scientific virtues but others were scientifically minded and they too were largely religious.
Cunningham is suggesting that nobody ever treated the Bible as literal because many of the early church fathers didn't treat the Bible as scientific. They still argued that that was how God made man, but that the science wasn't needed. It was the way to salvation and science doesn't help with salvation.
Early church fathers dismissed the couple little snafus that cropped up in the centuries after the Bible was written by pointing saying it wasn't written to convey science but to convey what God wanted us to know to be saved.
Cunningham draws this out to imply that they would be absolutely fine dismissing every damned word of Genesis as being false. This is completely unacceptable. Dismissing a few silly things like calling the moon a lesser light when really it reflects light from the sun, is forgivable because God just didn't want to share science with man, only salvation. Using this to conclude that, therefore, the Church fathers would be okay with reading it all as absolute fiction is not acceptable.
"Avoid the silly parts when you're trying to convert people" != "It's all bullshit".
Usher believed the Bible. He calculated the start of the universe as 4004BC, this "eccentric speculation" as Cunningham calls it is actually very robust. Usher, to his credit, did the math correctly. The Bible actually does give all the dates needed to make the calculation. Cunningham dismisses this as a bizarre and freakish misappropriation of the Bible because the Bible should be read as something false rather than something true and nobody has ever believed it. Usher is an anomaly. If you don't realize the utter idiocy of this, you need to hit the books.
Victorians had fossils and had uncovered dinosaurs, so clearly they would avoided doing anything as silly as interpreting Genesis literally. This middle of the line claim seems a bit stupid on a number of levels. Cunningham suggests that dinosaurs and fossils didn't contradict Genesis (because nobody really believed Genesis), rather it kept Christians on the straight and narrow of not really believing Genesis.
However, those fossils did contradict Genesis and the theory of extinction took a good while to become accepted. It was widely expected that these large fossil animals had to be alive somewhere (they survived the Ark after all) and it wasn't until we explored a lot of the world that it started dawning on people that they were dead and gone. It took a while to convince very influential and brilliant geologists that there never was a global flood. They believed Genesis literally and it took a large mass of evidence to pry those beliefs away from the scientific establishment. There's a reason why history starts in the Middle East around 4000 BC, because it use to start with the Bible. There's a reason why human fossils and primitive migrations aren't taught in history class (they are classified as prehistoric because they occurred before history that started with the Bible).
Simply because some of the early church fathers were okay with the moon not emitting light itself, doesn't mean that they would be fine with all life on this planet evolving over billions of years.
Cunningham is lying himself into a corner, suggesting that dinosaurs and other things that contradict Genesis are actually evidence in favor of his theory that the mainstream understanding was to 'read-Genesis-as-false'. His argument seems to be that Genesis has always been false, so when a scientific explanations come around and take huge chunks out of Genesis that's fine. Sometimes better than fine because it shows how obvious it must be that it wasn't actually read as literal.
When Origin of Species came out, it explained the intricacy, development, design, and understanding of life and demolished Genesis... or so Cunningham tells us we've been told. But, Cunningham has been arguing for the last 18 minutes that nobody ever read Genesis literally! Not Philo who was unpopular and non-influential, not Augustine who suggested maybe if you're trying to convert people you should read the silly bits, not Victorian England which already had plenty of stuff that contradicted Genesis. So why would anybody make this outlandish claim (other than having read any bit of the debates and arguments going on at the time).
However, England was going through the Industrial Revolution and a new idea of God came around about God who's main proponent was William Paley who compared life to a watch. And argued that it was so complex it could only have been made by God. --- Cunningham is so utterly full of shit. -- First off Paley 18th century, not 19th century, the argument had nothing to do with the industrial revolution and the argument was very old (several thousand years). Hume in the 17th century (writing before Paley) addressed the argument in depth in Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. Paley was required reading when Darwin went to college and rightly so. Darwin himself was very influenced by Paley and the parts that Paley failed to explain were the parts that troubled Darwin the most and helped him come to the conclusions he did. Why should each island have a different set of nearly identical finches or turtles or lizards?
The argument was and still is quite compelling. Basically Paley outlines all the rather amazing bits and things in life today and says 'show me how this could possibly happen without a designer, how could you possibly do any of this marvelous detail without God?', to which Darwin responded: 'here's how'.
The argument from design was not only widespread but it was the foremost theory as to how life could have possibly originated. When Galen challenged the evolutionists of the 2nd century, he did so by showing the intricacy for which no theory of evolution could account. The argument from design is *still* the best argument for God to ever be made (it falls short on a number of points but still clearly ranks best) and it was the foremost explanation for thousands of years and the fact that it went hand in hand with religion is actually fairly moot. Paley is more an explanation of life than an argument for God.
"Darwin killed God, but only Paley's God, who was at odds with the founding fathers of the Church." Conor Cunningham is a lying stupid piece of shit. That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. It's insulting to Darwin, Paley, and the Early Church fathers. I have much respect for each of these three groups and the suggestion the Cunningham makes is wrong on a number of levels. Putting Paley as a silly-misguided footnote is beyond pathetic, beyond dishonest, and missing a very valuable set of points.
Cunningham now cites some apologetics start to develop concerning evolution by natural selection in the church. As these apologists suggest that Darwinism doesn't necessarily lead to atheism, clearly it must be true. We are treated to the idea that if there's an apologetic for something it simply must be true! They are doing exactly what Augustine suggested they should do, when some embarrassing bits of science come up and make your religion look silly, sweep it under the rug as best you can.
Darwin lost his faith because his daughter died not because of evolution. While this is clearly true, that his daughter's death lead to his lost of faith, it isn't true that evolution played no role. His ignoring the what Richard Dawkins so aptly noted: Evolution allows one to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. This is the sense in which Darwin killed God. This glanced over point, should have been the core of the program. Evolution doesn't lead a person to atheism, but it lets their theism lapse without any nagging thoughts. I'll come back to it in Part 3.
He glances over a later copy of Origin which included the word "Creator" at the end due to the public outcry that Cunningham suggests never happened. If nobody cared up until then why would do people think they did... because, "the war had not yet begun."
It's really that the battle started in the US as the Scopes trial and had "nothing to do with science or religion and everything to do with politics and morality!" Really? Cunningham at this point seems to try to outdo himself on the stupidometer. When the scopes trial started everybody was shocked, SHOCKED, because they all accepted evolution... THE STUPID IT BURNS!
Part 2... coming soon.
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Watching Expelled, prepairing for underwhelmity.
Expelled Exposed.
Intro with spiced up prison camps.
Freedom is great, freedom makes us great, but what if we didn't have freedom?
We are losing our freedoms in science!
Creationists does something stupid, gets canned. (I expect this shall be a theme)
Shermer things "something else going on". -- Yup. Apparently he published the paper faking the peer review himself and was lambasted for not going through proper channels and for completely abusing his authority.
Another creationist starts teaching creationism and is not invited back to work more for the university. -- Zounds.
Doctor says evolution is false. -- Internet is mean to him.
Mark sets ups a fake lab at Baylor and it gets shut down. Baylor, though a Baptist university, is actually pretty good. Although, they recently fired the president and decided to go way more stupid. So any diplomas pre-2008 are probably legit.
Astronomer doesn't get tenure. Um. Nobody guarantees you tenure and I think ID would be a pretty good reason to deny you. Look how screwed over Behe tenure at Lehigh worked out. He doesn't publish papers anymore and he's a complete embarrassment. Lehigh is a good school but in my mind I associate it with stupidity.
"We don't want people to be taught that the earth is flat or that the holocaust never happened." -- Um, irony of irony, this movie got condemned by the Anti-Defamation league for holocaust denial. I haven't yet been confronted with this part of the film, so I suspect it is going to get much worse.
Ben Stein is lost... still lost.
He found it.
He talks with the Discovery Institute then a Bible college and then a bunch of religious points. They are suppose to keep up this front.
Evolution:Intelligent Design::Newtonian Physics:Einsteinian Physics... ? Really? Somebody needs to read Isaac Asimov's Relativity of Wrong to get the basic idea of how science works. Sure you can evolve but how does evolution do design? Wow that's pretty dumb.
It isn't going to be settled by the numbers but by the evidence and the arguments. If ID had any of those, they'd be set!
Now Ben's in France. Nothing's clear, you don't have very much math. We don't have a good idea of what a species is! -- That's true but has no bearing on evolution. I'm considerably underwhelmed here.
Dawkins is back. These clips are the only oasis in the whole thing. Though Dawkins atheism is fairly different than his evolution belief. There's certainly a relationship there, but it's pretty unrelated.
First cell? -- What long before that it works fine even in the RNA world.
No explanation for abiogenesis. Claims Miller's experiments were wrong. Popular theory is crystals! He's not joking because that's actually a really good theory. What the hell?
Ben Stein's Money joke...
250 proteins so it's math wise inconceivable. That's not possible! The problem with every last thing that says anything remotely close to this is that we don't actually know what the very minimal would be and we get evolution kicking in pretty early making all the future odds non-existent (once evolution kicks in the odds are ~1 that you get something, moreso considering it already happened).
Directed panspermia? That's mostly in jest and simply outsources the problem. Though if 4 billion years isn't enough we can use most of the 13.7 billion years to do whatever we need. Though, 2 billion seems more than enough.
A gigabyte. Zounds. I could put my genetic code on my thumbdrive. Oh the humanity!
I'm lost. I'm not even sure what I'm suppose to be impressed with.
Hey, it's that stolen Harvard animation that ERV talked so much about. Making for one of the few good bits in this entire production. Ouch, they changed it a lot. This is actually way worse in places. The Harvard animation was better.
Where do you get information from? Isn't that a question for computer scientists. Hey, I'm one of those and have an okay understanding of information theory. Let me explain. SDFKDSfioasdfoijsdfjasd2-289023d8923di2klj2kl;3dmkmndalksdfds -- That's more information than pretty much anything else I've typed here. Any mutation would produce information just as there is more information in the TV static than their is in the TV show. Evolution largely works to parse this information and isolate via natural selection any little bit that lucks into creating an organism marginally better than it's cousins. What? They are still harping on this crap?
OH SWEET SPAGHETTI MONSTER! I'm ONLY HALF WAY THROUGH!!! ARG!!! -- I'm burnt out about now. I'll try some more a bit later.
Intro with spiced up prison camps.
Freedom is great, freedom makes us great, but what if we didn't have freedom?
We are losing our freedoms in science!
Creationists does something stupid, gets canned. (I expect this shall be a theme)
Shermer things "something else going on". -- Yup. Apparently he published the paper faking the peer review himself and was lambasted for not going through proper channels and for completely abusing his authority.
Another creationist starts teaching creationism and is not invited back to work more for the university. -- Zounds.
Doctor says evolution is false. -- Internet is mean to him.
Mark sets ups a fake lab at Baylor and it gets shut down. Baylor, though a Baptist university, is actually pretty good. Although, they recently fired the president and decided to go way more stupid. So any diplomas pre-2008 are probably legit.
Astronomer doesn't get tenure. Um. Nobody guarantees you tenure and I think ID would be a pretty good reason to deny you. Look how screwed over Behe tenure at Lehigh worked out. He doesn't publish papers anymore and he's a complete embarrassment. Lehigh is a good school but in my mind I associate it with stupidity.
"We don't want people to be taught that the earth is flat or that the holocaust never happened." -- Um, irony of irony, this movie got condemned by the Anti-Defamation league for holocaust denial. I haven't yet been confronted with this part of the film, so I suspect it is going to get much worse.
Ben Stein is lost... still lost.
He found it.
He talks with the Discovery Institute then a Bible college and then a bunch of religious points. They are suppose to keep up this front.
Evolution:Intelligent Design::Newtonian Physics:Einsteinian Physics... ? Really? Somebody needs to read Isaac Asimov's Relativity of Wrong to get the basic idea of how science works. Sure you can evolve but how does evolution do design? Wow that's pretty dumb.
It isn't going to be settled by the numbers but by the evidence and the arguments. If ID had any of those, they'd be set!
Now Ben's in France. Nothing's clear, you don't have very much math. We don't have a good idea of what a species is! -- That's true but has no bearing on evolution. I'm considerably underwhelmed here.
Dawkins is back. These clips are the only oasis in the whole thing. Though Dawkins atheism is fairly different than his evolution belief. There's certainly a relationship there, but it's pretty unrelated.
First cell? -- What long before that it works fine even in the RNA world.
No explanation for abiogenesis. Claims Miller's experiments were wrong. Popular theory is crystals! He's not joking because that's actually a really good theory. What the hell?
Ben Stein's Money joke...
250 proteins so it's math wise inconceivable. That's not possible! The problem with every last thing that says anything remotely close to this is that we don't actually know what the very minimal would be and we get evolution kicking in pretty early making all the future odds non-existent (once evolution kicks in the odds are ~1 that you get something, moreso considering it already happened).
Directed panspermia? That's mostly in jest and simply outsources the problem. Though if 4 billion years isn't enough we can use most of the 13.7 billion years to do whatever we need. Though, 2 billion seems more than enough.
A gigabyte. Zounds. I could put my genetic code on my thumbdrive. Oh the humanity!
I'm lost. I'm not even sure what I'm suppose to be impressed with.
Hey, it's that stolen Harvard animation that ERV talked so much about. Making for one of the few good bits in this entire production. Ouch, they changed it a lot. This is actually way worse in places. The Harvard animation was better.
Where do you get information from? Isn't that a question for computer scientists. Hey, I'm one of those and have an okay understanding of information theory. Let me explain. SDFKDSfioasdfoijsdfjasd2-289023d8923di2klj2kl;3dmkmndalksdfds -- That's more information than pretty much anything else I've typed here. Any mutation would produce information just as there is more information in the TV static than their is in the TV show. Evolution largely works to parse this information and isolate via natural selection any little bit that lucks into creating an organism marginally better than it's cousins. What? They are still harping on this crap?
OH SWEET SPAGHETTI MONSTER! I'm ONLY HALF WAY THROUGH!!! ARG!!! -- I'm burnt out about now. I'll try some more a bit later.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
A Show to Hate: Eli Stone
So on the 31st the pilot episode of Eli Stone is set to air... and boy does it suck.
Eli Stone is a lawyer, a moron, and apparently a prophet.
The opening scene starts off with Eli Stone settling out of court with a women who claims that her child got autism from a vaccine additive that only their company produces. Clearly meant to represent, thimerosal which antivaxers claim causes autism, regardless that the original claim was made by Andrew Wakefield now under investigation for breach of ethics for both being paid by some lawyers to make up some evidence that vaccines cause autism and standing to personally gain by casting doubt on the MMR vaccine owning a patent on a measles only vaccine. Despite the inability to find any correlation between vaccines and autism (which is likely genetic and only seems to be widespread all of a sudden because we stopped diagnosing kids as retarded for every neurological disorder). So conceding that there is absolutely no way for her case to succeed, because there is no evidence and the claim itself is false, and there's no way to show that the vaccine caused the autism (tapes from pre-vaccine kids later diagnosed with autism show pretty tell-tale signs of the disorder) he settles out of court for 90 grand. Did I miss something? Why would throw money at something, when it's plainly wrong? Thimerosal isn't in any domestic vaccines it was taken out years ago, and no autism rates haven't gone down (there's no evidence they've changed).
Several more minutes in... he has a vision of George Michael (singing "I gotta have faith") in his living room and is referred to an acupuncturist. Sees this acupuncturist a few more times. Is diagnosed with a brain aneurysm to cause the hallucinations (no brain aneurysms don't typically cause hallucinations).
--- Shoot me now.
Closing argument, "case about faith." Believe in things without evidence like vaccines cause autism! -- Result: vaccines do cause autism! Five million dollars! *sigh*
Eli Stone is a lawyer, a moron, and apparently a prophet.
The opening scene starts off with Eli Stone settling out of court with a women who claims that her child got autism from a vaccine additive that only their company produces. Clearly meant to represent, thimerosal which antivaxers claim causes autism, regardless that the original claim was made by Andrew Wakefield now under investigation for breach of ethics for both being paid by some lawyers to make up some evidence that vaccines cause autism and standing to personally gain by casting doubt on the MMR vaccine owning a patent on a measles only vaccine. Despite the inability to find any correlation between vaccines and autism (which is likely genetic and only seems to be widespread all of a sudden because we stopped diagnosing kids as retarded for every neurological disorder). So conceding that there is absolutely no way for her case to succeed, because there is no evidence and the claim itself is false, and there's no way to show that the vaccine caused the autism (tapes from pre-vaccine kids later diagnosed with autism show pretty tell-tale signs of the disorder) he settles out of court for 90 grand. Did I miss something? Why would throw money at something, when it's plainly wrong? Thimerosal isn't in any domestic vaccines it was taken out years ago, and no autism rates haven't gone down (there's no evidence they've changed).
Several more minutes in... he has a vision of George Michael (singing "I gotta have faith") in his living room and is referred to an acupuncturist. Sees this acupuncturist a few more times. Is diagnosed with a brain aneurysm to cause the hallucinations (no brain aneurysms don't typically cause hallucinations).
Dr. Chin: "Everything has two explanations, the scientific and the divine."
--- Shoot me now.
Eli: "I don't believe in God."--- Thank goodness you shot me already.
Dr. Chin: "Sure you do, you believe in right and wrong. You believe in justice. You believe in fairness. And you believe in love. All those things, they're God, Eli."
Closing argument, "case about faith." Believe in things without evidence like vaccines cause autism! -- Result: vaccines do cause autism! Five million dollars! *sigh*
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Review: Built To Last
So I managed to get a Creationist booklet via my sister via some free box from a yard sale. Built To Last by Dwight K. Nelson. Let me just say, I haven't laughed so hard in a long while, at one point. Though, it doesn't manage to make the reading a non-negative experience.
Chapter 1:
It makes a great start by assume the Bible a priori. This is justified because a prioris are everywhere. Your belief in Thomas Jefferson is a priori because you assume he existed and despite the mountain of evidence for his existence a posteriori we must assume this a priori and thus God is safe to assume out of the blue (even without any good reasons to believe)... so we might as well assume the Bible.
Since Godel proved that you need to make assumptions which can't be proved [within the system itself] therefore mathematics would be a religion. And we all trust math right? See, so it's okay to make unproven assumptions for Christianity too!
Chapter 2:
Pick out some fossils. Disregard them. Claim there are massive gaps in the fossil record. Somehow mentioning Nebraska man, which isn't even a fossil. Apparently his research consists of Jack Chick tracts. Page 34 contains what must be the most compelling segue in history:
At this point I burst out laughing and read the line to multiple people.
Chapter 3:
Darwin's Black Box: Cue Behe's tired arguments about irreducibly complexity. For example think of an arch, an arch is impossible to build. You cannot remove any brick and have the arch stay up, thus no arch could be built from the ground up. Therefore God has built all the arches that exist.
Not really... there's just scaffolding just as there are intermediate parts which evolution later weeds out as unneeded once all the bricks are in. You can very clearly build an arch one piece at a time.
Chapter 4:
Big bang, yadda yadda, Genesis says, God exists.
Chapter 5:
Oddly enough this chapter is one of the most misguided of all the misguides of misguideville. He starts off by pretending that sexual reproduction is some difficult problem. It's certainly an interesting one. Breaking down the walls and allowing for genes to independently assort and evolve more independently and adding selection not just in what species get to live but in what species gets to mate is more than enough to pay for the whole only half your genes get to move on to the next generation thing. Frankly it's a good idea for genes to jump ship for the success of all genes.
Dawkins wrote the Blind Watchmaker which was a challenge to Paley... rather than explain how exactly evolution works he gives Paley's argument and let it sit there. Then suggests Dawkins just wants to be an atheist, which I assume he does when you consider the alternative. Not that that is at all a response. Ten years after Dawkins wrote his 'odd grasping for straw book', Behe came around and proved scientifically that complex systems are just too complex. *sigh*
Chapter 6:
Oddly rather than the more standard Dinosaurs are real but they vanished and survived the ark. He takes the view that dinosaurs are monsters which God needed to drown. Noah's ark rather than being so large it couldn't float is an amazing design because it's really big. Because, if it were a myth they would have said it was a smaller boat.
God must be a moron. His plans suck if a very well evolved predator/scavenger is a horrible mutant result of unforeseen events (by an all seeing entity).
Oh, and the bones just settled as such because of the flood and for some reason the heavier stuff floated to the top.
Chapter 7:
Apparently there are seven days in the week and therefore the Genesis account in Genesis 1 and contradictory one in Genesis 2 are both correct. Apparently today being Tyr's day and tomorrow being Wotan's day is an argument for biblical creation. If the Bible is false, then there can't be a seven day week.
Chapter 8:
At this point he dances on the corpse of John Lennon who "died in a pool of his on blood on a New York sidewalk" -- which is inaccurate and secondly an argument against religion. John Lennon was gunned down by a crazy Christian fundamentalist (Mark David Chapman). This sack of shit (Nelson) beyond recycling bullshit apparently dances on the cooling bodies of great men for singing Imagine.
From Wikipedia:
He recycled nonsense for seven brief chapters then in the one where he said he would make his own statements, he cheers for murder. Built To Last is a horrific pile of trash. Dwight K. Nelson is a bastard. The negative aspects and downright evil depressing scum-words outweigh the funny nonsense where his ignorance is amusing. Some creationist books have ignorance/scum ratios such that reading them is more amusing than disturbing... this isn't one. The only time he steps out beyond the Bible and recycled nonsense and ignorance, he does so to dance on the corpse of a truly great man. Pathetic.
John Lennon was shot by a crazy Christian so we should all become Christian! My sister got this book for free... she paid too much.
Chapter 1:
It makes a great start by assume the Bible a priori. This is justified because a prioris are everywhere. Your belief in Thomas Jefferson is a priori because you assume he existed and despite the mountain of evidence for his existence a posteriori we must assume this a priori and thus God is safe to assume out of the blue (even without any good reasons to believe)... so we might as well assume the Bible.
Since Godel proved that you need to make assumptions which can't be proved [within the system itself] therefore mathematics would be a religion. And we all trust math right? See, so it's okay to make unproven assumptions for Christianity too!
Chapter 2:
Pick out some fossils. Disregard them. Claim there are massive gaps in the fossil record. Somehow mentioning Nebraska man, which isn't even a fossil. Apparently his research consists of Jack Chick tracts. Page 34 contains what must be the most compelling segue in history:
But in case you are still not ready to embrace the creation accounts of Genesis, let us look elsewhere in Scripture.
At this point I burst out laughing and read the line to multiple people.
Chapter 3:
Darwin's Black Box: Cue Behe's tired arguments about irreducibly complexity. For example think of an arch, an arch is impossible to build. You cannot remove any brick and have the arch stay up, thus no arch could be built from the ground up. Therefore God has built all the arches that exist.
Not really... there's just scaffolding just as there are intermediate parts which evolution later weeds out as unneeded once all the bricks are in. You can very clearly build an arch one piece at a time.
Chapter 4:
Big bang, yadda yadda, Genesis says, God exists.
Chapter 5:
Oddly enough this chapter is one of the most misguided of all the misguides of misguideville. He starts off by pretending that sexual reproduction is some difficult problem. It's certainly an interesting one. Breaking down the walls and allowing for genes to independently assort and evolve more independently and adding selection not just in what species get to live but in what species gets to mate is more than enough to pay for the whole only half your genes get to move on to the next generation thing. Frankly it's a good idea for genes to jump ship for the success of all genes.
Dawkins wrote the Blind Watchmaker which was a challenge to Paley... rather than explain how exactly evolution works he gives Paley's argument and let it sit there. Then suggests Dawkins just wants to be an atheist, which I assume he does when you consider the alternative. Not that that is at all a response. Ten years after Dawkins wrote his 'odd grasping for straw book', Behe came around and proved scientifically that complex systems are just too complex. *sigh*
Chapter 6:
Oddly rather than the more standard Dinosaurs are real but they vanished and survived the ark. He takes the view that dinosaurs are monsters which God needed to drown. Noah's ark rather than being so large it couldn't float is an amazing design because it's really big. Because, if it were a myth they would have said it was a smaller boat.
Tyrannosaurus rex is no figment of the imagination! But the production of horrible mutant creatures was terribly out of sync with God's original plan of interspecies harmony.
God must be a moron. His plans suck if a very well evolved predator/scavenger is a horrible mutant result of unforeseen events (by an all seeing entity).
Oh, and the bones just settled as such because of the flood and for some reason the heavier stuff floated to the top.
Chapter 7:
I hereby submit to the jury that the seven-day week and the seventh-day Sabbath are a perpetual testimony to the veracity and historicity of the Creation accounts in Genesis 1 and 2.
Apparently there are seven days in the week and therefore the Genesis account in Genesis 1 and contradictory one in Genesis 2 are both correct. Apparently today being Tyr's day and tomorrow being Wotan's day is an argument for biblical creation. If the Bible is false, then there can't be a seven day week.
Chapter 8:
At this point he dances on the corpse of John Lennon who "died in a pool of his on blood on a New York sidewalk" -- which is inaccurate and secondly an argument against religion. John Lennon was gunned down by a crazy Christian fundamentalist (Mark David Chapman). This sack of shit (Nelson) beyond recycling bullshit apparently dances on the cooling bodies of great men for singing Imagine.
From Wikipedia:
The song "Imagine" also angered Chapman – at prayer meetings and religious rallies, Chapman and his prayer group also sang a parody with the lyric "Imagine, imagine John Lennon is dead."
He recycled nonsense for seven brief chapters then in the one where he said he would make his own statements, he cheers for murder. Built To Last is a horrific pile of trash. Dwight K. Nelson is a bastard. The negative aspects and downright evil depressing scum-words outweigh the funny nonsense where his ignorance is amusing. Some creationist books have ignorance/scum ratios such that reading them is more amusing than disturbing... this isn't one. The only time he steps out beyond the Bible and recycled nonsense and ignorance, he does so to dance on the corpse of a truly great man. Pathetic.
John Lennon was shot by a crazy Christian so we should all become Christian! My sister got this book for free... she paid too much.
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