Definition: Preacher

A preacher is a person who only works on sabbath, telling you to follow bizarre and arcane rules like, 'anybody who works on the sabbath should be stoned to death'.

79th Edition of Carnival of the Godless!

Latest CotG at Sexy Secularist!

Abiogenesis has a shoe to drop.

I'm always scoffing at IDiots and nutter creationists who think God poofed the universe into existence having themselves poofed God into existence for this specific purpose.

However, such experiences have given me the ability to spot arguments waiting to be made. A lot of the research into abiogenesis actually involves clay. It turns out to be a fantastic material for early abiotic evolving molecules. There's a shoe here just waiting to be dropped. Genesis says that God made man out of clay... abiogenesis suggest that life was formed out of clay. It's going to be one crappy crappy argument... but it's going to be made many many times.

Okay, back to figuring out how to bring about Stalinism. As an atheist, that's obviously where I'm going with all this 'question your preconceived notions', and 'ask for evidence for things before believing them' stuff. Because rational thinking is sure to bring about soviet state dogma. I just wish the religious hadn't figure this out so adeptly.

I am not a liar!

This post has zero one comments.

Irreducible complexity and computer code.

One of my hobbies is evolutionary algorithms. I try to run them on a few different things, for example solving for the Pythagorean theorem is my latest quest. I basically hand "organisms" two numbers and ask for the result. The organism which comes closest to approximating what the hypotenuse would be if those numbers were sides of a right triangle wins. The organisms take the code, try something and live or die based on their results. Due to rounding errors it works much better if you use smaller numbers such as below 100.

However, I have made them play poker by handing them all the information about the current hand and asking for an action, and they bust out and die and the better players are copied, mutated and put into the empty seat.

One of my earlier bots was simply a linear program. It was a bit slow so I tried some nice intelligent designing on the programming and coded the following.

Take value of starter one.
Add value of starter two.
Compare value to 15, fold if less, call if equal, raise if greater.

It would run for a few hours and the resulting code (after it took over the gene pool) was:

Take value of starter one.
Destroy information of what starter two is.
Compare value to 8, fold if less, call if equal, raise if greater.

Well, I had forgotten that I told the starters to sort, so the higher card was first followed by the lower card. This had the result of making considering only the lower card a viable strategy (one could make sure both starters were good rather than calling with A4 and other fairly rag hands). I was constantly pissed at the bot, I couldn't understand why it destroyed the information of what one of the two cards was. It literally blinded itself to this very important information. How the hell is that evolutionarily beneficial? Seriously, gouging out one of your eyes as an adaptation?

I was describing the problem to my brother and realized why it did what it did. It was irreducibly complex!

Each line in the original program is required for any functionality. If one doesn't consider the information of the first card, comparing the total to 15 results in a bot which always folds (highest card is 13, ace). Not considering the information of the second card has the same result; it can't make the minimal requirements. Adjusting the comparison number down any, made the player play too loosely and was driven extinct.

The bot used scaffolding to avoid this problem and get to the better program.

Take value of starter one.
Overwrite value of starter two with 7.
Add value of starter two.
Compare value to 15, fold if less, call if equal, raise if greater.

From this point it can simply adjust the values without dying off, getting low enough to drop the consideration of starter two without resulting in a lethal mutation. Freeing up the overwrite value to be whatever it wants to be.

The result is a program which gouges out its own eye to escape my poor programming. Leaving the destruction as a vestige (as no modification to the program actually needed consider the information) so it qualifies as junk code. It served no purpose, and hurt the future prospects of the organism, and seemed like the worst bit of code it could evolve. I stopped the program and started the damned thing over several times to nudge that bit of code away and tried to guide the evolutionary process... it failed every time. I was really getting upset with it. Herding cats is one thing, try herding genes. A vestige of reducing an irreducibly complex program, and I blessed them unaware!

Orgel's second law: Evolution is cleverer than you are.

Internet Regained!

After a month and a half, I have proper internet access again. Hell yes. Things are good, birds are chirping, frogs are croaking, the Japanese are producing the stem cell breakthroughs we should have produced, the sky is blue!

Life is good!

... life was good before, but now life is good AND I have internet.

Romulus and Remus' cave found. Proves entire story is exactly accurate.

Yeah, it turns out the founders of Rome actually existed, were actually suckled by a wolf, were actually gods, the proof: Romulus and Remus' cave was found!

Some scholars, such as Andrea Carandini believe in the historicity of Romulus. Why others doubt the historicity of characters with amazing deeds attributed to them with absolutely no shred of evidence that it's true, escapes me. I always thought the assumption was that such an individual existed be it Robin Hood, Jesus Christ, or even King Arthur himself.

As Plutarch notes:

Suddenly the sky was darkened, a thick cloud of storm and rain settled on the earth; the common people fled in affright, and were dispersed; and in this whirlwind Romulus disappeared, his body being never found either living or dead. A foul suspicion presently attached to the patricians, and rumors were current among the people as if that they, weary of kingly government, and exasperated of late by the imperious deportment of Romulus toward them, had plotted against his life and made him away, so that they might assume the authority and government into their own hands. This suspicion they sought to turn aside by decreeing divine honors to Romulus, as to one not dead, but translated to a higher condition. And Proculus, a man of note, took oath that he saw Romulus caught up into heaven in his arms and vestments, and heard him, as he ascended, cry out that they should hereafter style him by the name of Quirinus.

Romulus ascended bodily into heaven as the God Quirinus, joining Jupiter and Mars as part of the trinity Archaic Triad.

All of this is absolutely true. We know because they found the cave.

Argument from Desire.

The Argument from Desire, propounded by C.S. Lewis and others is a profoundly important argument for the existence of God. Now, see if you can detect a logical flaw.

If everybody wants something, it exists.
Everybody wants God to exist.
Therefore, God exists.

It seems about as coherent as Lunatic, Liar, or Lord.

Jesus was either a Lunatic, Liar, or Lord.
ARE YOU CALLING JESUS CRAZY!?
ARE YOU CALLING JESUS A FRACKING LIAR!?
Jesus is Lord.
God exists.

Yeah! I just got my first creationist. I feel so special.

So, my blog finally hit paydirt. I received my first creationist comment.

In my post Well I'm stumped. Evolution must be a lie. I managed to hook a creationist.

I took a comment from Shalini's Scientia Natura: Evolution and Rationality (a blog worth a visit to be sure) about how, if we evolved from monkeys why are there still monkeys (an argument so stupid even Answer in Genesis rolls its eyes). AiG discourages its use for the reason I encourage it: it's fish in a barrel.

She, unlike myself, has plenty of interesting comments as fodder. Until now:

Ronald L. Cote writes:

Tatarize, As a biologist with 20 years experience in applied science, I can assure you that evolution is , not only a lie but one of the greatest deceits in our history.

*DING* *DING* *DING* - We have a winner!

Not only is he a creationist, he pretends to be a biologist... with 20 years of experience in applied science. This could mean anything as far as creationist go. Mr. Cote could be a 15 year old boy, he could be a chemistry teacher, he could be a dentist. One of the few things he certainly is not is a biologist. If he actually were a biologist, that credential alone would make him pretty much a posterboy for creationism in general.

Being in computer science, I find it hard to conceive that the order and precision and sheer awesomeness doesn’t cause you pause that this couldn’t possibly be the result of random chance over time.

Well certainly there's a notable difference between:

for (int i = 0; i < 100; ) if (rand() % 10 != 0) exit(1);

and

for (int i = 0; i < 100; ) if (rand() % 10 == 0) i++;

You see, the first is going to move on to the next line once in googol tries! Literally, 1 in 10^100 However, do the limits of the seed number (starter input for a pseudorandom number / the input can only produce random numbers of the same number of bits as the seed number and the seed number doesn't have a googol's worth of bits) it is likely that it is impossible. What are the odds of the second one moving on to the next line? 1 in 1! It will only take a bit of time. There is nothing unlikely about evolution, in fact, the core of evolution is that it makes odds and chances moot and simply takes a while.

Being in computer science, and moreover considering my experience in evolutionary algorithms, I am less surprised than most that engineering projects can be accomplished by a blind, mindless process, knowing absolutely nothing about the world, and solving unfathomable complexity. One of the interesting properties of evolution is that complexity cannot phase it. Considering no variables it can manage to find a result which could only be found by considering thousands of variables. Failure, is not an option and only the best approximation of success will survive.

To me the most convincing aspect of evolution is not that monkeys still exist, but that , after unearthing countless millions of fossils to the point that museums are giving them away and that even ebay has 3,000 for sale, there still does not exist a comprehensive and true “fossil record”, that could, would and should give us an incontrovertible and foolproof record of species and how they changed getting from point A to their present form. Of course, no such thing exists but should if the hypothesis was sound.

Um. The fossil record is actually really good for most organisms. I'm not even sure what the is suppose to mean. You want all the fossils leading from man to our chimp ancestor? There's a pretty good set. We can trace a number of species pretty much step by step until they meet their common ancestor. For biological evolution the fossil record is fantastic evidence for evolution. The argument here seems to be that even though there are tons upon tons of fossils there aren't enough to satisfy his definition of "comprehensive"?

Additionally, the process of evolution is ,from all accounts ongoing. If so, why are we not able to observe plants and animals in varying stages of transitioning from something to something else.

Usually the generations are pretty small, but you can still see the effects. Humans have pretty good records for our changes in gene frequency, but the better results are the ones with the shorter population times. For example, over the 20 years this fellow claims to be a biologist (*eye roll*) we have seen TB transform from a serious infection to a multi-resistant and even extreme-drug resistant strains. You cannot fight TB with typical antibiotics. It has long since evolved resistances to those. In fact, there are some strains of TB which if you have them the government is right to lock you up and physically stop you from going about your day. As was the case of the lawyer who was diagnosed with TB and still flew to Italy and back. Luckily he turned out to have MDRTB rather than XRTB, and nobody caught it from him.

Also, I daresay the best and most effective way to finally wipe out malaria is to genetically alter a gene in mosquitoes making them immune. The immune mosquitoes by all accounts would be evolutionarily better off than others. The gene frequency of the malaria immunity would skyrocket and without altering the mosquitoes as a whole. We save millions of lives with evolution.

Surely, where there are millions of animals being physically observed , as in Africa, something must be in the process of change that would be evident. Again no such thing occurs.

You know in those nature videos when you see the lion kill the slow wilderbeast? Well, assuming there's any genetic aspect to make that one guy slower than the rest, guess what you just saw?

Asking us to observe evolution in megafauna is like asking us to observe atoms in a glass of water. You can do it, but you aren't going to see what you'd expect (the water would require some large molecules and brownian motion).

Instead, evolutionists feed the masses with cockamamy, inconsequential trivia usually clouded in carefully couched terms as “possible” explanations for proof of evolution.

Um. Mountains of evidence for evolution, aren't cockamamy hunches. Scientists are careful with their words, unlike creationists who proudly proclaim "God did it!" without reservation or a basic understanding about what they are discussing.

The whole theory is collapsing because it is a myth. If it were true, the weight of the evidence would be so overwhelming that there would be no cause for controversy!

There isn't any controversy. There's a couple idiots who think it contradicts their God. It does contradict their God. But, that doesn't actually make it false. Considering the great evidence for evolution and the complete and utter lack of evidence for their God... so much worse for their God. A mindless, powerful, amazing process made all life on this planet. Your God doesn't even have dominion over fungus. Not really sure what that God thing was suppose to do anyhow. We have everything covered, and where we don't we're at least trying.

As you state, a large measure of faith is essential to be a believer.

I was being sarcastic. The idea that a person has 'faith' in science just as one has faith in religion is absurd. The only things science requires is that ideas can be proven false, and new ideas (whether false or not) can be crafted. If we use our old ideas as the building blocks for new ideas, science will proceed along its path inevitably and unavoidably explaining as much as we can know about the universe. Whether some things are unknowable by science is unknowable, because we cannot know if we have the perfect solution; we only know that this solution is better than our previous solution. However, the comparison between a leap of belief taken to avoid a greater leap of non-belief, to the monumental leap of accepting the infinitely ridiculous, with no evidence, on a parent's order, is patently dishonest, grossly ignorant, or, perhaps, forgivably naïve.

Obscure question of the day.

Why would one "Move 'Zig'"?

Awe! That's so cute... he actually thinks that's science!

Look! They are playing scientists like the big mean people who paid attention in school. It's so cute, and vaguely reminds me a cargo cult. They do all the things they think scientists do, in order to be taken seriously, but are completely wrong.

There were some tribes during WWII especially in the New Guinea area. Who believed that the westerners commanded Cargo to come out of the sky. They went out of their way to create everything perfectly to receive cargo down to the fake earphones, if the westerners did it, they replicated it. Cargo seems like a very useful thing to get, and certainly worth the effort.

Overwhelming Evidence (below) the great conspiracy, propping up a valid theory making it impossible for ID to gain a foothold (regardless that it's just sooooo obvious). Are preventing the world changing break through which is as follows:

“Dark energy, that drives the expansion of the universe, is one of the deepest and most exciting puzzles in modern science. We posit that dark energy is the field manifestation of the parent seed of the universe, just as the cosmic vacuum’s zero-point energy. They all originate from the cosmic seed’s biophoton emissions, which blackbody radiation provides a holographic biofield for the generation of the physical universe. Based on the fact that the biophotonic radiation emitted by DNA is coherent, we predict that the cosmic seed's biophotonic field or "dark energy" is equally coherent.”

You see, dark energy is the field manifestation of the parent seed of the universe and they all originate from the coherent biophotonic radiation emitted by DNA within the holographic biofield. Duh! Isn't that so cute? I mean look at all of those big science sounding words. We should expect that cargo any minute. Everything is perfect, the runway, the traffic tower, even down to the headphones and English sounding words being said into them. We saw those great visitors come and do all this and get cargo... we are perfecting it ourselves! Any moment the great cargo will come for our efforts. Few could do a better job sounding like those scientists who get all the accolades than this: "Blackbody radiation provides a holographic biofield for the generation of the physical universe!" It has background radiation from the big bang, a word stole from Star Trek, a word for life-field and also life-light, and a grand claim to explain the entire universe! That cargo is due any minute now!

“The elusive Higgs boson – so vital to the Standard Model of particle physics that it is dubbed “the God particle” – is identical with the genotype of the phenotype universe, and each human genome is its reproduction. Based on this identification we posit that mass-giving is life-giving because the elementary particles that come into contact with the cosmic seed's biofield or quantum vacuum receive their mass and property as a result of that interaction. “

The Higgs boson... so vital.... genotype, phenotype (scientists use those words)! The Higgs Boson is like the DNA of the universe and establishes the biofield and mass. So "mass-giving is life-giving" because of interactions with quantum vacuum and the cosmic seed's biofield (which as above we know to be come out of the cosmic parent seed's biofield established in the holographic biofield by the biophotonic radiation!

CARGO! CARGO! CARGO! CARGO!

People say that unless you're science your ideas won't be accepted. Well, they have certainly taken their ideas and gone through the motions. They get kind of sad concerning this peer-reviewed thing. They keep trying to go through those motions too, but the mean people who review papers constantly, reject them. BUT IT LOOKS EXACTLY LIKE THE OTHER THINGS THAT GET ACCEPTED!

Just as Cargo cults miss the point of the actions and go through the motions of the actions, the ID proponents do the same. It isn't that sounding like science makes your ideas accepted, it is that actually doing science provides you with acceptable ideas. One could patter-on incoherently about coherent biophotonic radiation within the holographic biofield (giving even postmodernists a run for their money), or one can take a good look at the world and try to figure out how it actually works. As quizzlestick (the author of the article in question) notes:

If Kazmer were still laboring under the shackles of materialism would any of this have been possible? Of course not – these are the kinds of discoveries that can only come about when we first reject the rigid dogma of the philosophy behind atheism and Darwinism's only life-support.

He's right. When you are forced to conform your ideas about reality to the realm of reality it's like working with all but two of your hands tied behind your back. Only when you reject reality do such things come to light. The reason ID isn't accepted is because people restrict their ideas about reality to reality. What the hell is reality to dictate to us what is and isn't real! Allowing reality to dictate our lives rather than us to dictate reality is the real core difference between atheists and theists.

Update: I looked at the comments some more and the other work of this great almost breakthrough and you know what the "parent seed of the universe" is? This great Intelligent Design science breakthrough starting point? CHRIST! That's right Jesus Christ is the parent seed of the universe. No! ID isn't religious!

Why no peer-reviewed papers from ID?

According to a post on Overwhelming Evidence,

Those of us who have spent hard years grappling with the finer points of Intelligent Design know that nothing could be further from the truth: There is no group I know who work harder to attempt to explain these difficult scientific topics than ourselves. We engage with all levels of society, and our findings are plainly true to anybody with an open mind. More importantly we are on the verge of some of the most important scientific discoveries in the entire history of science which could yield benefits to the whole of mankind were it not for a conspiracy of Darwinists who will stop at nothing to preserve the reputation of their absurd science.

Grappling with a plainly true theory? When ever somebody asks that you have an open mind, they are asking that you become credulous and invariably have a closed mind themselves.

Let's see what's the next point to rebut... OMG A MASSIVE WORLD WIDE CONSPIRACY PROMOTING A RIVAL THEORY WHICH SOMEHOW WOULD PREVENT ANOTHER THEORY FROM PRESENTING AN INDEPENDENT CASE FOR ITSELF! WOW.

Core Problem: Religious Epistemology

In the July/August issue of Skeptical Inquirer, Richard Carrier makes the point that the core issue concerning religion and atheism is that of religious epistemology.

The problem is religious epistemology. As long as we have that we will always have fallacious and ridiculous beliefs like creationism, biblical literalism, false beliefs about atheism, and so on. - Richard Carrier, Skeptical Inquirer, Volume 31, Issue 4, Page 66, July/August 2007

I must agree in the strongest terms. We tend to notice religion only when it does something stupid like oppose stem-cell research or evolution. We notice it when it gains political clout or when it uses said political clout to impede on our rights or to line their pockets with our tax dollars. However, these are all simply outgrowths of dogma and the reason why the religious believe dogma to be valid: faith.

If not for the belief that reality doesn't reflect what is real and actual, or that evidence is unneeded or that propositions are actually stronger without evidence, it would be impossible to prop up such endeavors. One cannot believe the universe is 6000 years old without faith, nor can one believe in 72 virgins in paradise after crashing a plane.

The problem with religions is they want different rules. They want to declare rather than determine. They want to announce rather than analyze. They want to believe rather than justify. Faith allows people to believe things which may be comforting. This isn't an argument for faith, simply a statement of its purpose. Faith has nothing to do with truth, because truth has nothing to do with comfort.

Preferring the lie, to an unwelcome truth, is the mark of a coward.

Welcome every truth.

Inventions to change the world.

Printable solar panels via Nanosolar. Nothing fancy nothing amazing, just pushed the technology to be easy and cheap to manufacture. They can manage to print it out for about $.3 a watt. Which is pretty much cheap enough to use as wall paper.



NuVinci CVT (continuous variable transmission) is a nifty little design to change gears without set gear levels. They are currently using the design for bikes. My brother would use it for a unicycle (a gear shift on one of those would be like magic). And it probably is going to have some great applications in wind turbines allowing them to maintain their power output without spinning so fast as to burn out or going so slow as to generate no power.

It doesn't exactly change everything, but it does make a number of things considerably better, smaller, and some things previously non-economical become economical. I think a car with a continuous transmission would be pretty awesome... and I bet it wouldn't blow out as quickly.

Garcia is now the 8th most popular surname.

NYT article (requires Bugmenot) on the census results (via Pandagon) finds that Hispanic last names are ranked 8th (Garcia) and 9th (Rodrigues) as far as last names go that's pretty good. In other news, my surname ranks in the 500s... a very similar last name ranks in the mid 100s. *sigh*

I don't even know what's depressing about that.


1. Smith (881 occurrences per 100K people)
2. Johnson (688)
3. Williams (569)
4. Brown (512)
5. Jones (505)
6. Miller (418)
7. Davis (398)
8. Garcia (318)
9. Rodrigues (298)
10. Wilson (290)

Shorter Dinesh Dsouza

Shorter Dinesh Dsouza,

Atheists are fallaciously using reality to determine what is and isn't real.

Sure, but what will you replace it with?

Theology Non-Rule #24: Things need to be replaced when they are removed.

You can't stop doing heroin! What would you replace it with? People need heroin! It gives them comfort!

Admittedly, I don't have anything to replace that with.

Well I'm stumped. Evolution must be a lie.

One of the many knowledgeable replies to NOVA Judgment Day was as follows:

If evolution were true and man "evolved" from apes, why do we have apes and monkeys co-existing with man? Why have the apes not all turned into humans?

Well I'm stumped. That seems to be such a strong argument that I can't refute it. I'll continue to believe in evolution on faith because this argument has clearly destroyed any reasonable basis I could have had for evolution.

If you're a creationist or an intelligent design proponent or perhaps even an cdesign proponentsists, you should use this argument as often and as loudly as possible.

My complaint about Judgment Day.

The PBS Nova report on the Dover trial was quite well done and reportedly captured the entire affair really well. The defense was pathetic and the science prevailed regardless of how conservative the judge was. It was just a complete wash out.

One part annoyed me though. There were several teachers and people who opposed ID and as a consequence received some of that Christian tolerance (death threats, insults, attacks of every kind), they pointed out in several parts of the report that this was so very uncalled for because they were Christians and active in the church. The impression I got is that if they were atheists the threats, attacks and insults would have been called for. It is not okay to send death threats to Christians when they oppose Creationism dressed up in drag. And though, denying the antecedent doesn't make for a valid argument, it certainly does give the impression that attacking atheists is okay.

If (Christian) then death threats are not called for.
(~Christian)

If one adds the premise:
If (~Christian) then death threats are *STILL* not called for.

Then one doesn't even have an argument. It boils down to "death threats are not called for" and pointing out that they are Christian.

It's okay, though, it doesn't sit well with me.

God grants Georgia prayers, then attacks some kids for giggle.

God granted the prayers of the Georgia governor by producing one inch of rain which will do nearly nothing for the extreme drought experienced by the region. I question why a state with access to ocean water and strong evidence of climate change isn't investing a lot of money in desalinization plants and rather is resorting to begging mythological characters.

Certainly this is evidence of God, in the same sense that if you believed elves caused it to rain, every time it rains you would see evidence of elves.

Also in the same news story in Tennessee, it turns out that storms knocked out a Baptist church sending glass into children's faces and them to the hospital to have secular doctors patch them up.

*Update: In case anybody was slightly impressed, note, the rain was forecast by scientists prior to the event of praying for rain (again). A cynic would note that he prayed for rain previously and this second call for rain came seemingly out of the blue, but just after the prediction of some rain was forecast, and that he just saw the forecast and quickly arranged a prayer for it in order to give credit to God... at least a cynic would say that.