To quote Michael Shermer, I “investigate paranormal claims, pseudoscience and fringe groups, and cults and claims of all kinds between science and pseudoscience, and non-science, and junk science, voodoo science, pathological science, bad science, non-science, and plain old nonsense.”
When asked in the following video to respond to Immanuel Kant’s statement that without an afterlife morality couldn’t survive, Vidal responded:
“God is blackmailer. God is warden of the prison. He created us all in his image — probably a mistake — and then allows us to run wild and punishes us or rewards us with his beaming vision of himself. This is no god I really want to have any traffic with at all. I mean, the idea that good behavior only depends upon your fear of what will happen to you after you die, that you will be punished excludes all of philosophy. It excludes Plato, it excludes the mystery cults of Greece, it excludes the Roman idea of what is a good man. There goes Marcus Aurelius, there goes Epictetus, there go the stoics. These are all better thinkers than anything that the Christian church has come up with in 2,000 years.”
So let me get this straight. The argument is: Obama’s a fascist BECAUSE Obama’s a fascist! (Translation: I have no idea what the word “fascism” actually means).
As for the second dude, he needs to learn a bit more about history. Lincoln was also accused by critics of being a tyrant who supported strong federal government. In fact, I seem to remember some unpleasant business about half the country LEAVING THE REPUBLIC because they opposed his “big government” ideas. Lincoln’s assassin even cried out “Sic semper tyrannis!” or “Thus always to tyrants” upon delivering the fatal blow. So even Lincoln had to deal with morons who didn’t understand what terms like “fascist” or “tyrant” actually mean.
But I guess it should have been obvious these douches weren’t big in the brains department when they decided to call themselves “Teabaggers“, right? LOL
Take your pick on favorite definition:
teabagger- 1) one who carries large bags of packaged tea for shipment. 2) a man that squats on top of a womens face and lowers his genitals into her mouth during sex, known as “teabagging” 3) one who has a job or talent that is low in social status 4) a person who is unaware that they have said or done something foolish, childlike, noobish, lame, or inconvenient. 5) also see “fagbag”, “lamer”, “noob”
. . .
n. A man that dips his scrotum and testicles into the mouth of another person. (as if dipping a tea bag into hot water)
Call Jenny 867-5309 – No, not that Jenny. I mean Jenny McCarthy, The Witless Witch of the West. She’ll be on the Oprah Woo Woo Show and is going to be available live for a web chat tomorrow evening at 7 PM CDT. If you intend to call think very carefully about the question. Commenters on Orac’s much more popular blog linked to above are posting question suggestions. Here are 3 super uncritical clips from that show airing tomorrow available at anti-vaccinationist Kim Stagliano’s blog. Jim Carey’s final line in the 3 clip couldn’t be more apt to his situation: “Love can kill you if you make the wrong choices.”
A review of Christopher Hitchens’ most recent theist-crushing – Hitchens debated against Monsignor Lorenzo Albacete, a physicist, theologian, and author of God at the Ritz: Attraction to Infinity. And it seems that unsurprisingly he kicked his Albacete’s ass. I expect the debate will probably make it to YouTube soon enough.
Last week, I mentioned that creationist Bill Lucas was going to be speaking at Virginia Tech. Well he gave his talk and guess what? It turns out he’s at best totally full of it and at worst, crazy.
Will anyone buy Expelled on DVD? Anyone? Anyone? – That’s right, the little creationist propaganda film that proved that Ben Stein doesn’t use “Clear Eyes” that nobody saw is coming to DVD. Jimmy cracked corn and I don’t care. But I figured I use this as yet another opportunity to plug the website that totally debunks the claims in the film, ExpelledExposed.com
EPIC FAIL:
Mollie Ziegler Hemingway’s logical fallacy in The Wall Street Journal – Hemingway’s idea of a logical argument is to cite a Baylor University study that vaguely suggests religious people are less likely to believe in other pseudosciences or paranormal claims to make her case that skeptics and atheists do more harm than good by trying to teach people how to think critically. Of course it doesn’t seem to occur to her that the reason the religious tend not to believe in other forms of pseudoscience or paranormal claims is because often the specific beliefs of the religion demand mutually exclusivity. For instance, fundamental Christians must reject psychics as at best charlatans and at worst devil worshipers. Religions are very good at keeping their parishioners away from the competition.
NEWS I SHOULD HAVE MENTIONED BEFORE NOW:
James “The Amazing” Randi is giving a talk in NYC – I will definitely be there with bells on (I haven’t decided whether these are to be literal or figurative bells yet). If you can come, this is not to be missed. There’s a reason they call him “The Amazing.” Oh, and it’s FREE.
New skeptical-friendly show, The Mentalist, coming to CBS – The main character is a guy who uses his keen observational skills to solve crimes. He used to make money pretending to be a psychic but then went straight. Sounds a little like the show Psych. Though it’s also received lots of comparisons to House.
AND NOW FOR A MOMENT OF SCIENCE:
New Optics Technology To Study Alien Worlds – “NASA Goddard scientist Rick Lyon has been working on potential missions and technologies to find planets around other stars (called exoplanets or extrasolar planets) since the late 1980s. Only recently has he begun to believe that NASA may actually fly a planet-finding mission in his lifetime.”
Why Chemo Works For Some People And Not Others – “MIT researchers have shown that cells from different people don’t all react the same way when exposed to the same DNA-damaging agent — a finding that could help clinicians predict how patients will respond to chemotherapy.”
Primordial Fish Had Rudimentary Fingers – “Tetrapods, the first four-legged land animals, are regarded as the first organisms that had fingers and toes. Now researchers at Uppsala University can show that this is wrong. Using medical x-rays, they found rudiments of fingers in the fins in fossil Panderichthys, the “transitional animal,” which indicates that rudimentary fingers developed considerably earlier than was previously thought.”
“. . . songs will be edited to remove the word “Yahweh” — a name of God that the Vatican has ruled must not “be used or pronounced” in songs and prayers during Catholic Masses.”
And in related news, Sean Combs has chosen to change his name to Yahweh, since the name’s now up for grabs.
Your Faith On Rice – See the percentage of the world’s population belong to which religious religious denomination and how many atheists there are represented by rice.
Are Catholic Apologists stealing the atheists’ Scarlet Letter symbol? – Sorry guys, the Scarlet Letter traditionally represents the persecuted and otherwise marginalized positions of society like adulteress, abolitionist, abortionist, and atheist. When you’re part of the ruling class you don’t get to use it. Contrary to their rhetoric, Catholic Apologists wouldn’t know real persecution if it was right in front of them.
Jesus Water – What is it about water that people feel the need to always ascribe magic properties to it? IT’S FREAKIN’ WATER!
But here’s a product I would like to own:
You put in a copy of The Passion of the Christ and it converts it into The Golden Compass. If only.
Matt Damon on Sarah Palin. I couldn’t say it better myself:
AND NOW FOR A MOMENT OF SCIENCE:
Flies, Too, Feel The Influence Of Their Peers – “We all know that people can be influenced in complex ways by their peers. But two new studies in the September 11th issue of Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, reveal that the same can also be said of fruit flies.”
DNA Study Reveals Evolution Of Beer Yeasts – “Lager lovers convinced that their beer of choice stands alone should prepare to drink their words this Oktoberfest. New research by geneticists at the Stanford University School of Medicine indicates that the brew, which accounts for the majority of commercial beer production worldwide, owes its existence to an unlikely pairing between two species of yeast – one of which has been used for thousands of years to make ale.”
Immaturity Of The Brain May Cause Schizophrenia – “The underdevelopment of a specific region in the brain may lead to schizophrenia in individuals. According to research published today in BioMed Central’s open access journal Molecular Brain, dentate gyrus, which is located in the hippocampus in the brain and thought to be responsible for working memory and mood regulation, remained immature in an animal model of schizophrenia.”
Brightest Gamma-ray Burst Was Aimed At Earth – “Astronomers from around the world combined data from ground- and space-based telescopes to paint a detailed portrait of the brightest explosion ever seen. The observations reveal that the jets of the gamma-ray burst called GRB 080319B were aimed almost directly at the Earth.”
Personally, I have no real interest in answering the question posed in the video because quite frankly, I don’t think it’s particularly interesting and find it to be a rather dumb question. But it got me thinking about the abortion issue. Now I’m not necessarily advocating anything in this blog, just trying to challenge people to think critically about their beliefs.
MY VIEWS ON ABORTION:
Regarding abortion I’m pro-choice. Abortions for all. I don’t care. I think pretty much most of morality depends upon the notion of reducing suffering, and given that a first trimester fetus doesn’t seem to have the capacity to feel pain, I feel there isn’t a strong case why my sympathy for what can fairly accurately and objectively be called a clump of cells should outweigh the potentially less ambiguous harshships of the unambiguous humans who may have to care for this human-to-be for much of their lives. And even if they planned to put the child up for adoption, women have been killed or their lives otherwise ruined on many occasions by overly religious parents or cultures once word of their pre-marital pregnancy has been exposed.
If you want to view this collection of cells as a human life, you’re welcome to do so but I feel it becomes problematic when nuance is introduced into the equation. For instance, if you believe that life started at the embryo’s conception, to borrow facts provided by Sam Harris in his talk about Stem Cell research, a 3-day old human embryo is a collection of 150 cells, compared to 100,000 cells just in the brain of a common housefly. And any cell with a nucleus in the human body can be manipulated to become a potential human life. So if we’re to consider any individual cell that is a potential life as an actual human life, as Sam Harris has said,
“Literally, every time you scratch your nose, you have committed a holocaust of potential human beings.”
“It’s time we realized that this arithmetic of souls doesn’t make any sense.”
FALSE INCONSISTENCIES IN ANTI-ABORTION VIEW:
But there’s a common argument that’s used against lunatics like Paul Hill, who was willing to murder abortion clinic doctors for Jesus, that addresses the supposed inconsistency between their methods and their goal. It’s seen as a contradiction or hypocritical (an understatement to be sure) for someone defending life to kill in the process. Well I have to disagree with this argument. In order for the continued survival of our civilization we kill to protect life all the time whether in war or whatever. So it seems to me to be just a weak argument to say that killing to protect life is inconsistent.
Further, not all life holds the same value. I think most people would agree that protecting a baby or an “innocent” is more important than a full grown adult. For instance, I’ve got a little logic puzzle. Suppose hypothetically that a crazy killer is holding you and 2 others hostage. The other 2 hostages are a baby and an adult. Now the killer decides he’s going to kill 1 of the other hostages and makes you decide which one. You have no way of stopping him and no other information about the 2 other hostages? Do you choose the baby or the adult? Most people I think would choose to save the baby over the adult. Though you’re free to disagree with me.
REAL INCONSISTENCIES IN ANTI-ABORTION VIEW:
So while I see nothing particularly inconsistent with being willing to kill to protect life I do see a far larger inconsistency between the beliefs of the anti-abortion crowd and their actions. If you view a fetus as a life worthy of being treated the same as any as full human being with a birthday and everything, you’re welcome to it. I just personally think there’s an enormous difference. Although they profess to view a fetus, even one that’s only days old, as being a life no different from that of a baby, I’m not entirely convinced that they truly hold this view in their heart of hearts, or at the very least I’m not convinced that they take the issue as seriously as they claim for 2 reasons:
1. Though the anti-abortion crowd is quick to call those who choose to have abortions “murderers” they”re notoriously vague as to how they feel a woman should be punished for having an abortion.
While murderers are sentenced on a case by case basis based on the particular circumstances, no one should be philosophically vague as to the severity of a murderer’s punishment. Should anyone ever be given the death penalty for an abortion? Should anyone ever receive lifetime imprisonment? Surely 9 months of community service is hardly a reasonable punishment for the premeditated murder of a baby. How to punish “baby murderers” is a reasonable and practical concern and so I suggest that you take the time to think about this question.
Criminals are to be tried and sentenced on a case by case basis because there can be no justice so long as laws are absolute. But I think it’s fair to say that the vast majority of people in our society would find the notion of a premeditated murder of a baby a crime probably worth a harsher punishment than, say, 9 months of community service, regardless of whether you or I feel that an individual is capable of truly rehabilitating within such a short period of time. So do you think abortion should be viewed less strictly than other forms of murder? More strictly? Can you think of a scenario where someone might receive a life sentence for an abortion? On what basis should rape victims be viewed less harshly? I’m not asking anyone to write the law books here but I would sincerely like to know people’s general opinion on this as I think it is important to this issue.
2. While it’s not my intent to in any way encourage or promote violent extremism, I know that if I were convinced that abortion was nothing but state-sponsored baby-killing I’d feel morally obligated to put an end to it by any means necessary. Even violence may be a moral mandate when defending the defenseless. In an unjust society, the just person ought to be a law breaker. And in the case of a society with state-sanctioned baby killing (which is what the anti-abortion crowd typically believes), I’d say that’s about as unjust a society as is possible. Would not the most reasonable response to such a society be to stop the murder of innocents by any means necessary?
I don’t mean to suggest a particular approach is the only correct one but I would say that in a system that causes innocent suffering, there is a certain moral obligation in our society to use the least amount of force necessary to put an end to that suffering, no more and no less. And if the least amount of force necessary is violent, then I do think that violence is a moral imperative, so long as it does not exceed the violence mandated to achieve the intended goal.
Ask yourself: If you’re so convinced abortion is institutionalized baby murdering, then why aren’t you stopping it by any means necessary like any sane person would if they believed babies were being mass murdered by the government? If I held these beliefs, I’d probably view those who held the same belief but did very little to stop such “mass murder” as at best, not taking the issue very seriously and at worst, cowards.
I’ve argued this point with individuals who are anti-abortion and they’ve responded by saying that forming a militia would just get them killed and that that option is “not diplomatic.” You know what else it’s not? Successful. How many “babies” have been supposedly exterminated through abortion since Roe v. Wade? If you actually believe this stuff what are you personally doing to stop all the “baby-killing?” Is this really how you rationalize sitting on your ass for 35 years while “babies” are efficiently mass murdered? If so, good job.
From the point of view of someone who might believe abortion is the institutionalized mass murder of babies, how exactly does this willingness to wait 35 years for the government to overturn its policy any better than the German bystanders who did nothing while the Holocaust was happening under their nose? To those who say they’re fighting this by “being very active in politics,” I’m sure all those dead “babies” would appreciate your “being very active in politics.” How’s that’s working for ya?
This is part of why I’m confident that abortion will never ever be repealed in the U.S. The opposition either doesn’t believe in their cause enough to actually fight for it by any means necessary or they’re too cowardly to risk their cushy lives by fighting for it.
cdesign proponentsists invade Oregon – At Jefferson High School near Salem, Oregon, IDeots have surfaced to push teaching “the other view” in the Science classes. Here we go again. Do we need to have another Dover Trial? (Complete Trial Transcript here, Judge Jones’ complete 139-page decision here, and all other trial documents here.)
Ron Reagan said:
““Creationism is one of the scary beliefs Palin advocates.”
The How of Steve – Project Steve has hit the 895 mark, almost reaching 900 signers. If you don’t know what Project Steve is, it was devised by the National Center for Science Education as a parody of the signed lists of “Ph’d’s” and “scientists” collected by creationist that allegedly have serious doubts about the Theory of Evolution so that the creationists can make it look as though there’s actually a scientific controversy when in actually there isn’t. To really hit home how absurd this is the NCSE decided to make their own list of pro-Evolution scientists only they’d deliberately limit their list only to scientists with variations of the name “Steve,” such as Stephen, Stephan, Stephanie, etc. Last I heard, just the number of scientists with Steve names that supported the Theory of Evolution was way ahead of the un-handicapped creationist list of any scientist on Earth that they can find to sign that they have doubts of Evolution and the Steve list included more scientists in relevant fields.
A Musical Journey from Christianity to atheism – Matthew Terry is a musician who is about to release a song detailing his personal journey from Christianity to Atheism. You can check out the lyrics by clicking the link.
Comets Throw Light On Solar System’s Beginnings – “Scientists already know that comets played a significant role in ensuring that conditions were right for life on Earth. Most of the icy, small planetary bodies that otherwise became comets went into forming the gas giant planets in the outer Solar System but some were ejected from the vicinity of the largest planets. Of these, a fraction ended up in the inner Solar System bringing water and biogenic elements of interest to Earth. Without this cometary transport, life on Earth may never have had a chance to start.”
Large Hadron Collider Seeks ‘Universal’ Answers – “How did the universe come to be? What is it made of? What is mass? Can science prove that there are other dimensions? We may have answers soon. On September 10, 2008, Tel Aviv University’s Prof. Erez Etzion from the School of Physics and Astronomy will be in the control room of the new CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) on the border of France and Switzerland when the LHC is first turned on. Scientists are calling it the largest experiment in the world. It’s taken about 6,000 researchers, $8 billion and ten years to build.”
Smaller Males Go The Distance For Sex – “In a field study on Maud Island, New Zealand, evolutionary biologists from the University of Toronto at Mississauga discovered that male giant weta most successful at mating travel greater distances each night. Remarkably, it appears that being lightweight and having longer legs assist male wanderlust. Clint Kelly, Luc Bussière, and Darryl Gwynne found that males can walk more than 90 m each night in search of a mate – roughly equivalent to a 7000 m outing by a human male.”
“Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”
This quote belongs to Sherlock Holmes, the famous fictional, hyper-rationalist detective imagined by the ironically anti-rationalist, paranormal-believing Arthur Conan Doyle, who was for a time friends with skeptic Harry Houdini and who at least one historian has linked to the infamous Piltdown Man hoax of 1912 that creationists are still citing as some great evidence that Evolution is a massive scientific conspiracy.
Though interestingly, in 2002, Sherlock Holmes was inducted as an honorary fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry — the only fictional character so honoured — in appreciation of his contributions to forensic investigation.[7]
Anyway, here Steven Novella improves upon the logic of the famous Holmes quote. (though his is perhaps less poetic):
“Within the set of known phenomena, once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be true. If the entire set of known phenomena are eliminated as impossible, then the solution is simply uknown until a new phenomena that can serve as a solution is positively established.”
“It’s bigger than The Secret, more powerful than What the Bleep, more dangerous than The Da Vinci Code, and this will affect us all… because it’s real…”
Hmm. I wonder if the secret to unlocking the mysteries of the universe revolves around ending sentences with unnecessary ellipses to pretentiously suggest the infinite possibilities.
Flightless Bird Evolution Theories Challenged – “Large flightless birds of the southern continents – African ostriches, Australian emus and cassowaries, South American rheas and the New Zealand kiwi – do not share a common flightless ancestor as once believed. Instead, each species individually lost its flight after diverging from ancestors that did have the ability to fly, according to new research conducted in part by University of Florida zoology professor Edward Braun.” -Damn, I’m going to have to listen to creationist propaganda about how this one correction debunks all of evolution for some reason.
Accupuncture for babies – “When Savannah was diagnosed with autism a few months ago, Mary turned to acupuncture, in addition to more traditional therapies, to see if it would help. She said since the treatment began 10 weeks ago, the results have been encouraging.” -Does this article make anyone else feel like vomiting? As I reported before, acupuncture does not work!
Just because? – The BBC has an article on correlation vs. causation – Perhaps Dr. Buttar can learn something from this.
John Stossel exposes the insanity of food fads like the raw food nuts – I tend to like Stossel a little bit more than PalMD seems to. I think Stossel can sometimes be a very good skeptic though sometimes he just misses the mark like when he criticized Michael Moore’s film by parroting the sillier arguments like that people would have to wait on long lines. But yeah, these raw food people are crazy.
Orac shares my current feelings about constantly blogging about anti-vaxxers – I’d really love it if the anti-vaxxers took a break from doing and saying stupid things so I could blog about something else for a little while. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look likely to happen any time soon. I think I’ll dub this phenomena of forcing bloggers to respond to one’s insanely stupid statements “The Palin Effect.”
Minorities + Religion = Depression – New longitudinal study shows that for whites and blacks, religious participation leads to “fewer symptoms of depression.” But not so much if you don’t fit into these two camps.
AND NOW FOR A MOMENT OF SCIENCE:
Virtual Telescope Zooms In On Super Black Hole – “An international team, led by astronomers at the MIT Haystack Observatory, has obtained the closest views ever of what is believed to be a super-massive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy.”
Sun’s Role In Solar System Formation Questioned – “A strange mix of oxygen found in a stony meteorite that exploded over Pueblito de Allende, Mexico nearly 40 years ago has puzzled scientists ever since. Small flecks of minerals lodged in the stone and thought to date from the beginning of the solar system have a pattern of oxygen types, or isotopes, that differs from those found in all known planetary rocks, including those from Earth, its Moon and meteorites from Mars.”
Did Junk DNA Trigger Changes In Human Limbs? – “Out of the 3 billion genetic letters that spell out the human genome, Yale scientists have found a handful that may have contributed to the evolutionary changes in human limbs that enabled us to manipulate tools and walk upright.”
Last Woolly Mammoths Had North American Roots – “In a surprising reversal of conventional wisdom, a DNA-based study has revealed that the last of the woolly mammoths—which lived between 40,000 and 4,000 years ago—had roots that were exclusively North American.” – Once again science proves decidedly un-dogmatic and able to make new conclusions based on the evidence.
Sarah Palin – creationist sympathizer - In the past she’s stated that science classes should “teach the controversy” between Evolution and Creationism. I wonder if she thinks we should also teach these equally valid controversies:
Get ready for flu season – If you’re Kim Stagliano from the “Age of Autism” blog, you probably think the flu is harmless because you never saw anyone die of the flu in Leave It To Beaver, but it’s actually responsible for 35,000 deaths a year.
Autism “Research” Institute (ARI) announces Autism TV – Sounds like a great idea, right? Wrong. There’s a reason I put quotation marks around the word “Research.” Yup, this is a front group for propagating anti-vaccine misinformation. In fact, the Age of Autism blog says they’re sponsored by the ARI. What a depressing development. But I suppose Jenny McCarthy will probably have a job again.
Arctic Ice On Verge Of Another All-time Low – “Following last summer’s record minimum ice cover in the Arctic, current observations from ESA’s Envisat satellite suggest that the extent of polar sea-ice may again shrink to a level very close to that of last year.”
Why Flies Are So Hard To Swat – “Over the past two decades, Michael Dickinson has been interviewed by reporters hundreds of times about his research on the biomechanics of insect flight. One question from the press has always dogged him: Why are flies so hard to swat? … Long before the fly leaps, its tiny brain calculates the location of the impending threat, comes up with an escape plan, and places its legs in an optimal position to hop out of the way in the opposite direction. All of this action takes place within about 100 milliseconds after the fly first spots the swatter.”
Eyes Evolved For ‘X-Ray Vision’ – “The advantage of using two eyes to see the world around us has long been associated solely with our capacity to see in 3-D. Now, a new study from a scientist at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has uncovered a truly eye-opening advantage to binocular vision: our ability to see through things.” The article also says:
“All animals have a binocular region — parts of the world that both eyes can see simultaneously — which allows for X-ray vision and grows as eyes become more forward facing.
Demonstrating our X-ray ability is fairly simple: hold a pen vertically and look at something far beyond it. If you first close one eye, and then the other, you’ll see that in each case the pen blocks your view. If you open both eyes, however, you can see through the pen to the world behind it.
To demonstrate how our eyes allow us to see through clutter, hold up all of your fingers in random directions, and note how much of the world you can see beyond them when only one eye is open compared to both. You miss out on a lot with only one eye open, but can see nearly everything behind the clutter with both.”
And in monkey news…
Unexpected Monkey Population Found In Cambodia – “A Wildlife Conservation Society report reveals surprisingly large populations of two globally threatened primates in a protected area in Cambodia. The report counted 42,000 black-shanked douc langurs along with 2,500 yellow-cheeked crested gibbons in Cambodia’s Seima Biodiversity Conservation Area, an estimate that represents the largest known populations for both species in the world.”
Posted by mjr256 
Posted by mjr256 
Posted by mjr256 
