Micro-geology.

In my odd exploits on the web, I run into the craziest theories. One of the comments on some front page, referenced via ERV, via the main page of the subpage she noted (on the topic of Judgment Day (Nova program)), was this nifty little ID article about how Darwinists tend to reference natural bridges as evidence against the idea of ID. Namely that you can create things which cannot, in fact, be built from the ground up like natural arches. The point to which is the suggestion that though this analogy completely destroys their case they should still insist that it means that a designer exists and also to counter with some pathetic argument about how the original bridge material was naturally deposited in the first place. A point which misses the point and is obvious in the first place.

In any event, the first comment to this post offers up a new theory of micro-geology. Just like one can divide up evolution into micro and macro evolution and suggest that though there's tons of evidence for them there is some difference and thus suggesting a different mechanism. Even though it's the same thing for longer. "I can see the logic of one small step in a short amount of time. But, many steps over a long period of time? YOU MUST BE KIDDING!"

Mainstream science insists that all of the geological structures we see today have come about by a combination of purely natural materialistic processes such as erosion, deposition, volcanism, tectonic movement and other such concepts. I do not think anybody can dispute that these processes exist, but can they account for every single structure known to science?

To answer the question, yes those processes exist... yes they account for every single structure known to geology.

I accept that these forces can subtly change geographical features in the same way that micro-evolution can subtly change the form of sucsessive generations of a life-form, but can purely natural processes create entirely novel structures, indeed has it been shown that every known geological structure has a natural origin?

Yes. Though, you are welcome to suggest that space aliens made the grand canyon or something, though the compelling evidence suggests long term erosion.

Of course not, and therefore it is begging the question to merely assume that only non-materialistic explainations apply to geological structures.

We have compelling theories as to how such structures formed. We understand the processes and can explain, not only how, when, where, and why the geological structures exists, but can make accurate predictions about them. Geology is one of those sciences where it's pretty much finished. There's still a lot to know, but there's no massive mysteries left. It's like chemistry where there's plenty to know but the core of the science is so rooted it's down to filling in a few blanks. (Any geologists or chemists are invited to take me to task.)

For example those who have seen the grand canyon find it outrageous that something so beautiful might have come about by these slow natural processes.

Why? Why is beauty evidence of something fast and unnatural? I've seen the grand canyon a number of times. My reaction: "Damn, that's a big canyon."

We all know that earthquakes, erosion and volcanoes (for example) are destructive process, in the same way that a genetic mutation is an act of destroying information (not creating it).

Exactly the same, in that they are not. Genetic mutation does create information in the classic sense. Most are neutral and throwaway, some are harmful and lead to a lesser heredity (for an extreme example by killing the organism) and a precious few provide an improvement and as a result are preserved. Ask yourself, if you could in any endeavor keep only those results which helped and cast off everything which didn't... would you end up better off? Now, if after more time would you end up even better off? In fact, the longer this process goes on the more and more improvements would be accrued, it doesn't take any thought, mind, brain, designer, it takes something to keep the good and cast off the not-so-good and a hell of a lot of time.

However, I would be remiss if I didn't point out that this argument of 'earthquakes are destructive and therefore can't make pretty things' is significantly stupider than the argument that mutations don't create information. In the latter the problem is just that the person making the argument is ignorant of evolution and making a breathtakingly stupid argument, whereas in the former the argument is simply sophistry, and anybody with two braincells can note that earthquakes just shake up a bunch of dirt (and/or water) and create a number of potentially beautiful results and calling them destructive is silly and based on a few thoughts by some silly apes who like to build things. Things which tend to fall down here and there. And there's another oddity, it's always the places we haven't built stuff to fall down which are "beautiful". Don't you think the world would be prettier without our buildings?

The nano-errosionists have never offered a valid explanation for how their dumb, unguided processes are able to create things of beauty.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

And that beauty is such a give-away, a clue to where we should next be looking for design. If something in nature appears to be designed, has irreducible complexity and has specified complexity then it's pretty plain to anybody other than a self-denying evolutionist that it must be a designed object.

Specified complexity? When you make up something and get laughed out of the park, you shouldn't pretend it still works. Yeah, the problem is, nothing about geology seems designed. Really, for the most part, it's a bunch of dirt. Some parts are rather big, other parts are pretty neat looking, but when you look at the wings of a butterfly there is at least something that goes off in your head which says... pay attention to that... that is a good design.

I am reminded of Paley's argument. When you are walking and see a stone, you think to yourself that could have been there forever. However, when you are walking and see rather than a stone, a stone. The same argument doesn't apply. What is the difference between a stone and a stone. Why could one have simply formed by natural processes and the other one be clearly indicative of a designer. -- Wait, the argument seems to have developed another problem, though I can't quite put my finger on it.

Remember, the famous scientists at SETI use techniques comparable to ID's to detect design in radio signals. Why should we be afraid to do this for our planet?

Nobody is afraid of looking for the design in things. We just don't like idiots looking at things we have a perfectly reasonable scientific explanation for and screaming "GOD DID IT!" -- It's annoying and adds exactly nothing to our understanding of things. Also, it isn't an argument for anything it's a conclusion pulled out of your ass. What is this God thing? And why do you thing this thing is explained by such a thing?

cdesign proponentsists

In the Dover case on intelligent design, one of the stunning bits of evidence was in an early transcript of On Pandas and People just after creationism was booted out by Supreme Court where every reference to Creationism was promptly find+replace into intelligent design and "creationists" into "design proponents". One of the references was replaced rather wrongly resulting in "cdesign proponentsists" -- a rare transitional form.

“Evolutionists think the former is correct, cdesign proponentsists accept the latter view.”

However, where are the transitional forms between creationists and cdesign proponentsists? Where is the transitional form between cdesign proponentsists and design proponents?

For those of you who don't know what Intelligent Design is, it is the belief that the some life is just so complex that it must have been created by an Intelligent Designer (capitalized to show reverence to God) who might be a deity or space aliens but to stay within the law we aren't saying.

Parochial altruism and war.

According to a study published in Science, (see press release unless you magically have access), parochialism and altruism work hand in hand within non-altruistic groups.

The evolutionary reasoning for altruism is that helping one person for a small detriment to yourself as a group makes it more likely that you will be helped out at a later date. Being a good and moral person allows you to live in a world where you are surrounded by good and moral people. However, in a world where nobody is good and moral, being good and moral is disastrous. As Mal on Firefly put it in Our Dear Mrs. Reynolds, "If somebody tries to kill you, you try to kill them right back!" -- However, if nobody tries to kill you... you should never try to kill others. The best strategy is the strategy other people are using. If they are moral, be moral. If they are not, don't be moral. This however leads to an odd sort of chicken or the egg problem. Who are going to take the moral, less successful strategy enough to make it more successful for everybody involved?

Altruism—benefiting fellow group members at a cost to oneself—and parochialism—hostility toward individuals not of one’s own ethnic, racial, or other group—are common to human nature, but we don’t immediately think of them as working together hand in hand. In fact the unexpected combination of these two behaviors may have enabled the survival of each trait according to Bowles and Choi.

In a state of war, you are united against outside threats, xenophobic and altruistic.

Aggression consumes resources and risks death; altruism, particularly toward those with whom we have no direct relationship, has the effect of helping other genes advance at our expense. But parochial altruism could have evolved if parochialism promoted intergroup hostilities and the combination of altruism and parochialism contributed to the success of these conflicts.

So by promoting a sort of tribalism and intergroup warfare, rejection, fear, and non-cooperation between the groups, the intragroup altruism becomes much more likely to be returned to the benefit of everybody (within the group). If you can isolate your group with respect to other groups, you both need to work together in order to succeed in these conflicts and can work together due to the much greater assurance that your gesture will be reciprocated.

In a state of war, when xenophobic and altruistic, you can swing the optimal strategy strongly toward the altruistic side to the advantage of the entire group.

Without warfare a general altruism works quite well for all groups involved. In a world without any trusting capital where everybody is distrusting and altruism is too rare to make altruism a viable strategy. The best way to get to a state where altruism is the norm and killing people isn't a viable strategy is to form a small group and kill OTHER people.

From a state of nature, where the life of man is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short to a more peaceful altruistic world... the best path is via a small warring group where everyday is the day after 9/11. Where everybody is xenophobic and altruistic. Where you love your neighbor as yourself, but take slaves "of the strangers that do sojourn among you."

The best way to build up some trust within a group larger than your family is by forming a group, go around murdering other people, enslaving them and insuring xenophobia. This, oddly, leads to altruism. You keep people out and help people in, and can succeed in tough times and help in good times, and your entire group will be the better for it.

Eventually expanding this to the point where the group boundaries break down and altruism becomes more universalized. Although it might help if we were attacked by aliens.

Genocide, xenophobia, hate, religious bigotry, and god-justified wars may actually be the birth pains of universal altruism. We happy few, we band of brothers, we group of soldiers about to go off and kill... may be the seeds of societies like ours where killing people or stealing things is a very ill advised strategy.

(via Science and Reason, which has some points worth reading on the religion aspect of this.)

Carnival of the Godless #79

CotG 79 is out at Aardvarchaeology.

Sir David Attenborough on atheism.

(via Richard Dawkins.net)

It's hard to argue on any of the points, and his points are very well done. He doesn't get carried down by any of these odd arguments against this or that or the other. He just states the facts and if you don't agree well then you are no longer a rational person. You are now disagreeing with the facts.

"Whom would Jesus vote for?" - What are you, stupid? Wait... yeah.

So there's a Nytimes article (bugmenot required) on the Evangelical Movement. I'm planning on reading it... I suppose, but there's an image:



Note the bumper sticker "Whom Would Jesus Vote For?" -- I'm astounded that anybody would try and and sound all grammatically correct using "whom" for a religious bumper sticker. Which is twice as odd in that it's wrong. "Who Would Jesus Vote For?" is correct. Jesus would vote for whom? For whom would Jesus vote? Who would Jesus vote for? If you vote the way Jesus votes, who would you vote for? For whom would you vote if you voted as Jesus would vote? -- 'Whom' is an object. 'Who' is a subject. Trying to sound all smart with the message made them wrong... go figure.

Whom cares?

Oh, and by the way Jesus is a Mexican name and most Latinos tend toward the Democrats.

Update: Hm. This is probably right.

Richard Carrier on Anthony Flew

Richard Carrier is one of the smartest people you'll ever hear about, though that has little to do with his blog post on Anthony Flew which is simply amazing. It makes you angry, saddened and amused at Flew and the vultures feeding from his corpse.

Sure I stabbed you in the face, but God forgave me.

I'm sorry you're still pissed about the stabbing in the face thing, but even though you're still steamed... God forgave me for it and it's over now. Also, God forgave that 20 bucks I borrowed too.

Theology Non-rule #37: Getting forgiveness from mythological characters rectifies something in reality.

Galactocentricity.

It's geocentrism for the Milky Way. We may just be this one little clump of rock flinging around this massive ball of fusing gas in the Sagittarius arm of the Milky Way... but even with the trillions upon trillions of other stars and galaxies... ours is at the center of that!

According to CreationWiki:

Few creationists disagree that the Earth is in motion around the Sun, and our solar system in movement within the Milky Way galaxy. However, simply put, geocentrism is the belief in a universe-centered world.

Evidence, such as quantized redshift, offers strong support that the Milky Way exists at the center of the universe.

How simply put... geocentrism (earth centered) is the belief in a universe-centered world. Wait, a universe centered world. What the hell? That's not even vaguely coherent. And the term is "galacto-" not "universeo-". Shouldn't it be "simply put" as an Earth centered view, simply put, is a Milky Way centered view.

And what was the evidence for this? Oh, Quantized redshift... who could argue with that! Oh, I can, oh physicists, oh everybody who understands what a redshift is. Basically due to a nice little doppler shift (change in apparent frequency due to motion) (think of the change in the sound waves (pitch) an ambulance (ecnalubma) makes when it is coming toward you and going away from you) when galaxies or stars or whatnot are flying away from our galaxy they seem to be shifted more toward the red. Noticing this red shift is what has lead us to understand the universe is accelerating in its expansion. What does this have to do with the Milky Way being at the center of the universe? Nothing. In fact, there's no real reference points at all, we might as well be flying around in any direction.

I'm glad these Creationists have stepped away from silly ideas like Biblical geocentricism and concluded much more reasonable things like "screw you we are too special cuz quantized redshift says so!"

Blog readability is High School?

What a crock!

Apparently Agraphia got Genius so I checked mine to see and "high school". Sure, it clearly just does a find match ranking and perhaps a word length check (if you're lucky) to make up a fairly arbitrary ranking. But apparently I rank High School...



I feel like I'm being punished for making the material understandable... because what it is really saying that the blog is tightly wound and incoherent without mass appeal and what I am reading is that him is Genius and me is idiot. That's what I'm reading even if it ain't saying it. Screw this... antidisestablishmentarianism!

I will put a nix on this vexing problem, though I have no empirical evidence that circumlocutions provide even auxiliary benefit to one's rank on the aforementioned arbitrary blog metric. I am attempting to achieve possession of no liquid monetary possessions (as the idiom should read) via a vocabulary far exceeding the mundane vernacular of one's secondary education.

Coming Around...

The more I think about it, the more I tend to agree. We atheists aren't going to stop being atheists but we certainly have given up a lot of argument ground in order to have an argument at all. The religious position has no ground whatsoever so there's no real debate where the debate should actually take place.

Atheist has a lot of baggage for meaning nearly nothing, and in reality the lack of something.

Frankly, Sam's right. Arguing against atheism should be an incoherent concept rather than the best way to defend the faith. If they were asked to put up or shut up rather than allowed to constantly shift the burden of proof by attacking something which means doesn't believe. His wording is a little poor and raises some hackles... but he's right, atheists are in a much stronger position on every issue than we give ourselves credit for.

--- You have no evidence for this God character and it isn't a reasonable thing to believe.
------ We'll you're just an atheist!

What does that actually have to do with it? Why qualify it? Why justify it? Why defend it? Why not observe the truth as Sam put it so well in Letter To A Christian Nation, "Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make in the presence of unjustified religious beliefs."

Religious people have honestly been using their cookie-cutter flawed knockdown arguments even without knowing the arguments presented to attack a 'lack of belief in God'... and their arguments never have the slightest bit to do with presenting evidence for a god or showing that it's the smallest bit rational to believe. -- We need to dam that hole.

I agree with Sam Harris. I disagree with Sam Harris.

Go figure.

Well, I finally got around to watching Sam Harris' AAI speech. It's been a while since I've had good internet. As is I am doing a P2P connection on the 802.11g with ICS running through a Verizon Wireless Internet on a PCMCIA card on a laptop. And I understand why his remarks manage to fly like bricks.

They reminded me of Nietzsche's arguments (explaining now). Nietzsche argued that morality was to protect the weak and religion was bullshit and faith nonsense thus what we should do it is throw it all out and make a world to give rise to the Übermensch. Now, what we have here is a coherency of premise which is hard to match. Morality IS to protect the weak! Religion IS complete hogwash! However, egotistical the conclusion it's still wrong. The idea that I am the biggest badass to ever walk the planet may be accepted in my mind without question and perhaps I should thusly support this great tear down of society to breed supermen and Nietzsche suggested. However, even if I were say, let's be conservative here, as strong as 50 men... I could be killed by 51 men. Furthermore, due to obvious advantages of team work I could probably be downed by like 20 men, perhaps 10 men, hell frankly one crafty women would be more than sufficient. The conclusion that I should want to tear down a system which protects the weak on the grounds that I am strong is about as coherent as I should want to prevent the rain because it rains on the unjust and I am a just fellow. The rain, it raineth on just but also on the unjust fellow (but chiefly on the just because, the unjust hath the just's umbrella). Society protects the strong as well as the weak, it is in our interest to protect the weak because, frankly, considering the groups everybody is quick to jump into... we are all weaker than some subset of all of society.

Now, Nietzsche's premise that we are abiding by a morality which supports the weak rather than the strong, and his desire to go to something more akin to a life Hobbes described as "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short" are complete nonsequiturs. As noteworthy and insightful as the observation is, the fact is we aren't the biggest badasses in the world. Groups of half-asses even bad half-asses are more than enough to take any individual down. This is enough to show the latter conclusions are flawed. We are social beings, because being social makes us collectively the biggest badasses ever. We usually tend to idolize rebels, but you know what else? We crush them too.

Similarly, Sam's observation that we have willingly stepped into a trap. That we have effectively allowed ourselves to be boxed into a place where rather than address our arguments people feel that they can simply address us is a huge tactical mistake. Rather than his typical pointed response, such as his clarion call for attacking the moderates who support religion with doublespeak writing a blank check for those religious fundamentalists who cash that check at the expense of good and moral people in the world, he calls for us to slither under rocks. Rather than rise up and refuse that frame, and not to allow atheism to be the subject of an argument on pathetically indefensible faiths he says we shouldn't call ourselves anything. We should just exist as good people in a screwed up world. We should fold our cards because our opponents have put us on a hand, when our opponents have no cards themselves. I'm sorry Sam but this part I simply cannot agree with, nor can your detractors.

Yes, 'atheist' is more of an adjective than a group title and Christians can no more provide substance to their claim that they telepathically communicate with a first-century wish-granting Jewish zombie by attacking my atheism as they could support the claim that they can fly by by attacking my mythicism, intactivism or Sci-fi fandom. I am an atheist. I do not believe in delusional deities anymore than I believe in fairies, goblins, or ghosts. And though I do not have a word for myself being a rational person in a country whose majority believes JFK was murdered in a massive conspiracy, I would not care if there were one. It would accurately describe me. We atheists need be more aware of this frame which boils down to a simple false dilemma and ad hom, but we need not throw the adjectives out with framejob!

So I'm Ill.. Again...

The chicken soup style illness managed to pave the way for a bucket and gingerale style illness. I personally blame the Bush administration. I'm not sure why but I certain dedicate everything coming out of me to him. Sorry to be so vulgar... I shouldn't talk about the Bush administration.

200 solar crosses stolen.

Apparently a cemetery was robbed for about $8000 dollars worth of merchandise namely, 200 solar powered crosses. I am kind of disturbed by the idea of solar powered crosses. Sure, we can't manage to get death valley turned into a massive solar power plant but we can use photovoltaics to power up little symbols of a Roman torture device? What next? Are we going to use ground based radiotransmitters to beam the text of the Bible to outerspace? Are we going to use interferometric modulation to change the colors displayed on a Jesus statue to very effectively make him appear to bleed. Watches with built in GPS systems to track the current location and direction and calculate the direction of Mecca from any point on the planet? DNA scanner to detect the presence of pork in order to keep meals kosher?

The sunshine hits a solar cell and that charges a battery inside and at night the crosses are illuminated.

I love how they describe the technology like a two year old, and as if it all just happens that way. Sunshine hits things, charges thing, and the crosses happen to illuminate...

Just freaky. Well, now I'm off to use Google Map's collection of satellite images to find Noah's ark.

Definition: Intelligent Design

Intelligent Design - n. Fighting for God with a thesaurus. Eg. "Before Intelligent Design was invented Creationists thought a thesaurus was a dinosaur."

My Phelps prediction.

I predict that Fred Phelps will appeal the civil judgment against him. I have it at $2.9 million, other people have $10.9 million. In either case Phelps is going to appeal and have it struck down in a heartbeat. He's going to counter sue for costs and win. This marine father who sued the church for protesting his son's funeral is going to be forced to go bankrupt for pushing this idiotic lawsuit.

Mark my words.

So I'm ill.

Apparently my nose refuses to stop producing that nose stuff save those times when it hardens and denies me access to my nose. I sneeze here and there in at more rapid rate than I previously would, I feel kind of crappy on top of that. And the only thing I have to fight the illness is Vitamin C, which has proven completely pointless in fighting advanced stage cancer, so what kind of effect could it have (apparently there's some remote chance that if I took it several days ago it might have done something) on the cold/flu whatever the hell this nonsense is.

Well, time to start washing my hand here and there (in order to prevent spread to others) (unless that is completely worthless too).

The pill costs strippers $150 a shift.

So oddly enough Geoffry Miller did a study to check if men could detect fertile women even without outward signs of estrus. The best place to do this (at least one with a very obvious metric for measuring such things) is a strip club. It is, evolutionarily, in women's best interests to to not advertise when they are fertile so that men will stay around. However, this isn't in men's reproductive interests, so an evolution arms race between non-advertising and detection comes about.

This theory is based on the idea that in evolutionary terms it benefits women to disguise when they are fertile so that their menfolk will stick around all the time. Otherwise, the theory goes, a man might go hunting for alternative mating opportunities at moments when he knew that his partner was infertile and thus that her infidelity could not result in children.

Well, it turns out that men are, not consciously, quite apt at this as the results showed a $150 dollar difference in earning potential while fertile.

The results support the idea that if evolution has favoured concealed ovulation in women, it has also favoured ovulation-detection in men. The average earnings per shift of women who were ovulating was $335. During menstruation (when they were infertile) that dropped to $185—about what women on the Pill made throughout the month.

Usually my point would be look at this neat evolutionary thing, or that it's odd that the Christian worldview is wrong once again as women and men wouldn't need estrus or any of this detection ability to sleep around if they are just to be married and have children as God intended (this was Austin Cline's point). Nope, I think it is rather interesting that strippers could net $150 more on average (during estrus) if they didn't use hormonal birth control.

$2.9 million in against Phelps. What crap!

I find Phelps entertaining, and I understand the theology pretty well. I think they are one of the most biblical Christian groups around, and obviously one of the most hated. Protesting funerals of dead soldiers with signs saying "Thank God for IEDs" or any number of rather disturbing signs. They believe that the War in Iraq is a punishment from God for homosexuality. Which frankly doesn't differ that much from those religious people who claimed that Katrina was punishment from God for homosexuality (though it missed the French Quarter), or Jerry Falwell claiming that 9/11 was because of homosexuality (the California wildfires have been attributed a couple times to gays). Really the only thing the Phelps have which these other groups lack is consistent faith that they are right. Other religious groups back-down at the first sign of hate... the Phelps double-down.

Well, one of the father's of a soldier killed in Iraq sued and won $2.9 million dollars from the Phelps family. This is bullshit. The Phelps broke no law in their protests, the father didn't see them at the event only later on the news, you shouldn't get money for sullied memories. Hopefully the Phelps (who are mostly lawyers) will get this overturned as the nonsense "I hate Phelps so much lets punish him for like three million dollars" crap it is.

Ofcourse nobody likes them they are immoral swine who follow the immoral actions suggested in the Bible. Anybody who does that needs to be shunned by a civilized society.

Harry Potter Books Spark Rise in Satanism.

A classic onion article from the past. They really need to store their archives properly for just text.

Harry Potter leads to Satanism.