God of the Gaps VS Newton

Reading "The Ascent of Man" is the best part of my commute.  In it I found this jewel of a quote by Sir Isaac Newton:

"To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age.  'Tis much better to do a little with certainty, and leave the rest for others that come after you, than to explain all things."

Brilliant.  Just brilliant.  It's probably one of the best comebacks ever to the old "but science can't explain everything" stupidity.  The fact that it comes from every creationist's favourite scientist just makes it so much sweeter! 

No, science can't explain everything right now.  That doesn't mean that your mystery of choice will never ever be explained.  We may not even get the answer in your lifetime but that doesn't mean we will never get the answer.  With each generation of scientists building on the work of their predecessors, we keep learning and understanding more, just like Newton said.  So if I can't give you a scientific explanation right this second, it doesn't mean the answer isn't out there.   It certainly doesn't mean that you get to make up your own answer in the meantime!

In the past there were tons of things we didn't understand.  Today we understand a lot more about a great many things.  Interestingly enough, everytime something was figured out no matter how long it took us or how difficult it was to figure out, the answer has never ever EVER been "magic".

So on that note since I started this post with a quote from an eccentric genius I'll end it  with the words of another brilliant weirdo:

"Life is full of mystery, yeah,
But there are answers out there
And they won't be found
By people sitting around
Looking serious
And saying isn't life mysterious?"

Tim Minchin, Storm

The Galileo Moment

"The news was sensational.  It made a reputation larger even than the triumph among the trading community.  And yet it was not altogether welcome, because what Galileo saw in the sky, and revealed to everyone who was willing to look, was that the Ptolemaic heaven simply would not work.  Copernicus's powerful guess had been right, and now stood open and revealed.  And like many more recent scientific results, that did not at all please the prejudice of the establishment of his day.

Galileo thought that all he had to do was to show that Copernicus was right, and everybody would listen.  That was his first mistake:  the mistake of being naive about people's motives which scientists make all the time.  "

Excerpt from 'The Ascent of Man' by Jacob Bronowski

Galileo didn't invent the telescope.  He did however improve on it.  A lot.  This amazing new device that enabled you to see ships from miles away as if it were right in front of you was a technological marvel and everyone wanted to look through it.  The problem was that Galileo didn't stop with looking at ships.  He kept improving the telescope and then he turned it to the stars.  That did not go over very well with some people, especially the Catholic Church.  It's not that they didn't accept science.  No, it's just that there was a certain kind of science they accepted and anything that dared to contradict it was blasphemy.  The fact that the earth was the unmoving center of the universe and that the sun revolved around the earth - these were articles of faith.  These ideas were wrong though understandable.  With the limited tools of the time, those seemed reasonable enough.  But science brought better tools and with better tools came better understanding and with better understanding came the upsetting of established doctrine.  It should have been undeniable, for the truth was there for anyone brave enough to look through the telescope, but no.  Protecting the established doctrine was far more important to the Pope than observing the truth.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.  I'm sure Galileo would be saddened but not terribly surprised by the current efforts to undermine the teaching of evolution.  People have very strong ideas about how things are supposed to be but then sometimes science comes along and says "Actually... no... you're wrong".  This leads to a very curious paradox where people want to be right but they prefer to hold on to their own idea of "right" (no matter how demonstrably wrong it may be) rather than accepting the truth and actually being right.  Very curious indeed.

This isn't true for everyone though.  I think most of us come to crossroads like these.  On the one side is everything you've been taught to believe is true, what everyone you've ever known has always insisted was true.  Maybe it's even that which you most deeply wished were true.  But on the other side is something that proves what you used to believe wrong.  Maybe it's something small yet nagging, like your conscience, your empathy, your sense of reason and logic or an experience you've had that made you see things differently.  Or maybe it's hard evidence, some science or historical fact you've never been exposed to before and no even though you wanted to dismiss it, you can't because it's very clearly true.  So you have the world you know (and are used to) on the one hand and a strange new, scary world on the other  What do you do?

Well, some people pretend there is no crossroad.  People like the church in Galileo's day or Answers in Genesis in ours just look away and say, "There is no other road but the one we have always followed.  The only thing that can be true is the thing we've always said was true.  We cannot have been wrong, not now, not ever.  "  And so they keep on their way, completely unwilling to even look through the telescope, for to do so would cost them too much.  It is a price they simply cannot pay.

But there are others.  Heretics, Apostates, Freethinkers - these are some of the nicer names we get called - who simply cannot do that.  We have to look, we have to know.  It's not always easy.  Knowing changes you.  No one enjoys finding out they were wrong, no one likes having their entire world turned upside down.  But that is the price of looking for the truth and we pay it.  Sometimes gladly, sometimes with difficulty, but we do it none the less.  The thing with truth is that no matter how disagreeable you find it, it's still the truth.

For some there is a choice between the facts and what they would like the facts to be.  For others there is no choice at all.  Some people can tell themselves they are right despite seeing more than enough to convince them they are wrong.  That's no way to live.

At least not for me.

But hey, on the bright side, no one is going to drag me in front of the Inquisition and threaten to torture me for disagreeing!  Thank goodness some things at least did change since the days of Galileo!

Science is not a Religion

Though many a religious apologist would insist that there is no conflict between science and religion, a lot of people in the religious as well as the not-religious-but-spiritual camp certainly do believe that.  These are the people leading the charge against the teaching of evolution, vaccinations, stem cell research and lately global warming.  Their main weapon against science (or as they prefer to call it, "science") is to treat it as if it was just another belief system.  A rival religion.  That way they can re-imagine the conflict as "what you believe vs what I believe" instead of "what I prefer to believe vs reality".

Probably the best example of this would be the work of one Mr Jack Chick.  His world is very sharply divided between right (his beliefs) and wrong (everyone who disagrees even a little).  He has published several tracts in which he treats science with the same mocking scorn he habitually lavishes on Muslims and Catholics.  To him, science is just one more flawed religious view from the pit of hell, a fact he recently made very clear in a tract on Global Warming.  I will try to use this tract to show why I disagree with his view of science as a religion.  In the interest of being open minded I will also try to point out the instances where science does seem like religion.  Sound fair?  OK, lets go!

Well this is not a good start.  Here science is represented by a very menacing looking Al Gore who, we should note, is a politician and not a scientist.  I guess this is something religion and science have in common, both are often hijacked by politicians with big egos and grandiose plans.

OK... I... wow...  That is just wrong!  Clearly Jack really hates science and he is not afraid to stoop to ridiculous caricature!  Stay classy guy!  But I digress, let's take him up on his invitation to "think about this".  Should we "little people" take these "scientists" and their "science" seriously?  Well it depends.  Would you (as one of the salt of the earth, no nonsense, common sense "little people") accept the "gracious council" of:
A brilliant doctor if you got sick?
A brilliant mechanic if your car broke down?
A brilliant engineer when you needed a bridge to drive on?
A brilliant programmer when you need reliable software?
A brilliant surgeon when your appendix bursts?
You would, wouldn't you?  And you would be all bitchy and condescending about it either.  Why?  Because expertise matters.  You know that it does.  You trust in experts all the time and for good reason!  You know that a lot of the things you depend on every day requires more than just a can-do attitude and some old fashioned elbow grease.  It takes some of that fancy elitist booklearnin' that's got Santorum so huffy.  It takes science.  Condescend all you want, you would still be living in a cave without generation after generation of those highfalutin' "scientists".

Ooooookaayyyy... So the first example of why we shouldn't trust those darn "scientists" turns out to be arguably the most unscientific people of any age, the Medieval Catholic Church?  Really?  Surely Chick must have noticed that this age where the Church was fully in control of everything was THE DARK AGES!  I know he didn't miss that part because it says so right there in the first panel!  You know what ended the dark ages?  The Enlightenment, a.k.a the age where science and reason made a comeback.  I would just like to take a moment here to do something Mr Chick never bothers to do at any point in this tract.  I'd like to ask "Why?"  See that is the first big difference between religion and science - science wants a why.  Religion on the other hand just tells you something and expects you to accept on faith.  Jack Chick certainly never commits what Mark Driscoll calls the sin of questioning in this comic, that much is clear!  So why did people think the world would end before the year 1000?  Because that's what the Bible said!  (Sort of.  All End Times Scripture requires an assload of "interpretation")  Yep, these weren't just Catholics being evil Jack Chick caricatures.  These were Christians reading Revelation and expecting the end of the millennium to herald Christ's return!  Just FYI, make a mental note of this whole "millennium" thing, It's going to come up again later...

[citation needed]

Right, well I trust Chick's grasp of history about as much as I trust his grasp of science so I have no idea if any of this is based in actual fact.  Heaven knows that the church swindled LIKE A BOSS during the Middle Ages so it's entirely possible but I didn't find any reliable sources for this claim.  All I do know is that none of this has anything at all to do with science!  No fear, there will probably be some hard science up next!

Or not...  So far we have an example of religious fraud and a spiritualist fraud (or whatever the hell Nostradamus pretended to be).  I'm sorry to say but one really should not be looking for science on the History channel (or National Geographic or Discovery any of the other science channels).  Gone are the days of Jacques Cousteau and Carl Sagan.  These days it's all ghosts, aliens, Bigfoot, the Bible Code and Nostradamus - if you want real science and history look elsewhere.

Wait, were we supposed to seriously discuss Nostradamus' abilities to predict the future?  You know what, nevermind we finally got some science!  I'll discuss that "scientific" prediction under the next couple of pages that continue in the same vein.  Just a quick note in case that Muslim comment seemed weird and out of context. Jack Chick is kind of obsessed with Muslims taking over England.  A reference like this randomly pops up every now and again in his tracts apropos of nothing.  No idea if that's a real fact either (I have my doubts) but it is very real to him and he throws it in all the time to remind the good Christians of the United States what will happen if they let those nasty secular humanists drive God out of school and government - the eeevil Muslims will take over your once beautiful Christian Nation!!!  Terrified yet?

Finally we come to the meat of the matter.  Here is a case where science really does seem like a religion!  You have a scientist making dire predictions of doom, much like an Old Testament era prophet like for instance Jonah.  Sure seems religious right?  Plus then those predictions failed to come true so it must be a false religion.  You know, just like the Bible must be false because Jonah's predictions didn't come to pass either!  Ah, but Mr Chick wouldn't agree with me there now would he?  Obviously Jonah's prophecy's didn't come to pass because the people of Nineveh changed their wicked ways after hearing of their coming doom.  You know, not unlike the way people change their ways in the face of some alarmist, hyperbolic warnings from a scientist.  I still remember how everyone was freaking out about the hole in the ozone layer and how it was going to kill us all.  Was it?  I don't really know.  What I do know is that the resulting freakout forced manufacturers to stop using CFC's in their aerosols and refrigerators, so if the problem turned out to be less disastrous than predicted it's because the freakout brought a change in behavior.  However I disagree with such tactics.  Look I get that it's very hard to get people to pay attention when you say that a global temperature rise of 5 degrees over the next 40 years will be a worldwide natural disaster leading to serious geopolitical problems*.  You get a much better reaction by telling everyone that everything the love will be ON FIRE next year!!!  In the short term anyway.  In the long term you get this kind of backlash from people like Jack Chick.  When you use such an atrociously bad attention grabbing tactic (not to mention atrociously bad science) you undermine the credibility of scientist everywhere and you end up with large groups of morons going "Pffft, "science"?  Whatever man, these guys are just making shit up.  They are always wrong!"  Hysterical reporting sells books and magazines but it also obscures the truth.  So no, the entire polar ice cap isn't going to be melted by next week.  But that does not negate the fact that the polar ice cap is shrinking.  3.82 million square miles sounds like a lot, doesn't it?  But notice how he doesn't say what it used to be.  Arctic ice is at a record low and that is not an opinion, that's a fact.  Also worth noting is that surface area is not the most important metric.  What really matters is density.  Every winter the ice cap grows but this growth is a thin layer that easily melts.  It's the thick, dense ice that is more permanent and this is the part that is seriously shrinking!  Furthermore this causes a feedback loop - thin ice melts easier exposing more water which absorbs more heat from the sun (white ice on the other hand reflects the heat away) leading to more melting leading to more ocean leading to more heat absorbed leading to faster melting and on and on it goes.

Here is a great example of why it helps to know something about science.  First of all climate is not the same as weather.  I'm serious.  What do you think climate scientists do?  Did you think they just stuck their heads outside the window and said "Hey it's kind of hot today.  It must be Global Warming!"?  They didn't.  That's why having a cold winter doesn't mean Global Warming is over.  Lots of things  can influence weather - like sunspots and La Niña and El Niño events for instance - but Climate is about the big picture.  They don't just look at the temperature of the season, they look at the temperatures over decades.  More than that even, they use tree ring and ice core data to look at climate changes for hundreds and thousands of years!  They don't just look at what the weather was like either, they also try to find out why.  Climate Change is not something Al Gore invented over a couple of beers one night in 90's.  Scientists have understood this phenomenon since at least the 1950's and have been warning us about it ever since.  (No, scientists in the 70's didn't think there was going to be another ice age.  That was just sensationalistic reporting, not actual science) Scientists say Global Warming is real because they've studied mountains of data, they understand how climate works and this is where everything is pointing to.  Secondly, did you notice the "global" part of global warming?  We are talking about something worldwide, not just something that happened in your back yard.  Sure, maybe your weather seems fine but have you checked everyone else's?  That changes the picture considerably!  Thirdly, even us "little people" can use our vaunted "common sense" to figure out if these extreme snows fit with Global Warming or not.  You may remember that the water that falls on you from the sky today was water that evaporated from the earth yesterday.  So if things get warmer that means more water evaporates BUT this evaporated water doesn't move out into space, it comes back down again.  So you would expect to see massive flooding and exceptionally heavy snowfalls if Global Warming was real and what do you know, we totally do!

Let's see, Catholics, Hippies, Feminists, Communists and bratty kids.  Yup, everyone Chick hates is accounted for!

Look, we can quote bad predictions by guys like Dr Ehrlich all day long (no really, he made a lot of bad predictions!) but that doesn't invalidate science at all.  Guys like that are sort of the Harold Camping's of the scientific community - they gather a lot of money and fame with wild, apocalyptic claims and when they are eventually proven wrong they end up being an embarrassment for everyone even remotely connected to their field.  But science does not work like religion, it is not based on authority.  There is no science messiah, no science pope, no bishops, no gurus, no prophets.  It's not about charisma, it's about the evidence - you either have it or you don't.  Facts trump everything.  It doesn't matter if you are the greatest mind of your generation, if someone proves you wrong then that is it, your brilliant idea is out**.  See that is another way that science differs from religion - it doesn't pretend to be infallible.  There is no inspired scripture in science.  Everyone's work will be poked, prodded and tested.  Science is not one person writing a sensational best seller.  In science you have thousands of people collecting and analyzing data and then checking their work as well as those of others.  In science you are encouraged to try and find the flaws in your work because everyone else in your field is most certainly going to do their best!  When a scientific idea turns out to be wrong no one treats it like the end of the world.  Usually you can learn a whole lot from the entire process anyway and so our knowledge base grows.  That is why Mr Chick's method of going "Hah! Your prophet was wrong therefore your arguments are invalid!" fails.  It's not about what this prominent scientist or that one said, it's about the data.  It's about the evidence.  You know, the things Chick never ever addresses in these tracts.  Here is why science is telling you Climate Change is real:



Here is why Jack Chick thinks science is telling you Climate Change is real:

...

I have a theory.  Not a scientific theory, just a shot in the dark.  I think Jack Chick lives in a dark basement and he never comes out.  I don't think he has interacted with real human beings in a very long time.  It's really the only explanation I have for why his comics are so insanely out of touch with reality.  Down in his basement he is free to imagine everyone else is just like him.  He believes in things because God tells him therefore everyone must believe things because some kind of god tells them to.  If they are not like him they must be his opposite.  So if he loves Jesus and the Bible and believes X and someone disagrees with X that must mean they hate Jesus and the Bible, right?  Really that is the only way I can imagine him coming up with such a howling falsehood.  Over here in the real world however we don't have to make up facts. Here we have polls and actual scientific studies done on the religious beliefs of scientists so we don't have to pull our answers from a major orifice.  Turns out that here in the real world things aren't quite as black and white as Mr Chick imagines.  A large number of scientists are atheists or agnostics but a substantial amount of scientists do have religious beliefs.  As far as I could find out, none seem to be worshiping any goddesses from ancient civilizations.  No, it turns out the religious men (and women!) of science are mostly Christians (both Catholics and Protestants) as well as Jews.  You know, people who believe in the God of the Bible.  People who hate neither Scripture nor Jesus.  However in Chick's defense almost none of them are fundamentalist evangelicals and if you are familiar with his tracts you would know that to his mind that's exactly the same thing as being a devil worshiping pagan!

I think it was George Carlin who pointed out that "saving the planet" really didn't have anything to do with "the planet".  The planet isn't going anywhere, but if we mess it up bad enough it will become very hard for us to live here.  That is what we are trying to save, not the planet itself but rather our ability to live here successfully.  I don't know why this is a difficult concept for Chick.  If you have a river that supplies your water and you poison that river then you lose your source of water and life.  If everyone dies from the poisonous water that's on you, not on Jesus.  Likewise, if you cut down all the trees in your area it won't be the devil's fault that you don't have any shade left.  It's demonstrably clear that we can make our local environment inhospitable.  All climate scientists are telling us is that 7 billion people all messing up their local environment leads to a pretty messed up global environment!  You don't think Jesus would allow that?  What about free will?  God allows sin but not environmental damage?  That makes absolutely no sense.  But then Jack Chick's theology doesn't make a whole lot of sense either.  Speaking of, it's time for the mandatory section on sin and salvation for this tract:

OK to sum up, God is in charge of everything, except when He's not and the Devil is.  The devil got all the authority over the earth from Adam even though that's not anywhere in Genesis and according to Psalm 24:1 (which he references but maybe didn't read) the earth and everything in and on it belonged to God all along.  But then again you really can't trust the Jews to understand their own scriptures and that is probably why they never understood that Satan was actually the God's 2IC on earth until the New Testament came along.  What does this have to do with global warming?  I can't wait to find out!

"He had a devil!"  Something Jack Chick imagines that Rabbi's say apparently...

Wait for it...

So there you have it.  The environmentalist have to be wrong because if they are right then we won't get to see Jesus 2: This time it's personal!  Guys like Chick spent their whole lives eagerly waiting for Christ Norris to come down and beat the snot out of all those nasty folks who dared to disagree with them!  He has to endure assholes like me making fun of the idiotic things he says and he copes with that by imagining us all getting tortured for eternity by the Lamb of God for daring to disagree with him.  This isn't about facts or science, at the core of it this has all been about a bloody revenge fantasy all along.  Since reality won't accommodate said fantasy, reality has to go!  Hold on... What was that last bit about a 1000 years?

Wait a second!  Jesus reigns for a 1000 years and then there is judgement and the earth gets destroyed?  That sounds familiar!  It's the same story he began this tract with!!  Of course when the medieval Catholics interpreted this to mean that after a 1000 years of the church being in charge Judgement day would come it was just a calculated scare tactic used to manipulate people.  When a Chick tract uses the exact same scripture to scare people into doing something that is completely different.  Because...?

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*Not an actual scientific claim so please don't quote that!  I was just trying to illustrate how real science often doesn't seem very dramatic.
**Just ask Aristotle, Newton or Einstein.  Those guys know what I'm talking about!

If you are interested in what scientists are actually saying about Climate change, go check out climatecrocks.com a site packed with actual scientific info.  It even has a very cool video series in case you didn't feel like reading but still want to separate climate fact from climate fiction.

Recent Ancient Beliefs

When I was a young fundamentalist Christian, I felt very secure in my beliefs.  After all, the things that we believed in MY church were the things that all real true Christians have always believed.  The rest of Christianity may fall away from the one true faith thanks to all their compromises with the fallen world, but not us!  No, we would always stay true to the things that Christianity have always taught and always believed.  We knew we were right because we were holding fast to what had always been right.  So it came as quite a shock to me to find out that so many of my age old beliefs were really quite modern!

I've blogged before on how some of our doctrine wasn't as Bible based and unambiguously clear as I once thought.  But it's really more than that.  It's not just about how "Bible based" my beliefs really were it's how recent they were, considering that these were the things that, supposedly, "Christians have always believed".

Christians have always been Young Earth Creationists.  Except they weren't.  This wasn't always an article of the faith, once upon a time it was totally acceptable to be a Christian and believe in an old Earth.  Throughout Church history there have been a variety of opinions on just how to interpret Genesis and the consensus was not always on the side of a strictly literal interpretation.  Some Christians fear that accepting science undermines the authority of the Bible (and therefore their own authority) and therefore we have the modern insistence on YEC as a tenet of the faith.  But listen to what the early church leader Augustine of Hippo (354 AD to 430 AD) had to say on the topic in his commentary on Genesis:

The full quote is even better!

So to paraphrase Augustine, if a literal interpretation conflicts with science then stop holding on to the literal interpretation because you will only embarrass yourself.  Or as he wrote elsewhere: "In matters that are obscure and far beyond our vision, even in such as we may find treated in Holy Scripture, different Interpretations are sometimes possible without prejudice to the faith we have received. In such a case, we should not rush in headlong and so firmly take our stand on one side that, if further progress in the search of truth justly undermines this position, we too fall with it. That would be to battle not for the teaching of Holy Scripture but for our own, wishing its teaching to conform to ours, whereas we ought to wish ours to conform to that of Sacred Scripture."  This also shows up the claim that, Christians have always been Biblical Literalists.  This just completely flies in the face the long history stretching all the way back to the Judaic Rabbis of debating and discussing the meaning of Scripture.  The whole strategy of throwing out all interpretation and only taking every verse at literal face value is a fairly recent invention. I believe that the strict literal approach arose in opposition to Higher Criticism gaining more mainstream acceptance around the 19th century.



Around this time a new doctrine also arose amongst Christians, that of The Rapture.  I was taught that Christians have always believed in the Rapture but no, this belief is only about 200 years old.  Christians may have always believed in the Second Coming of Jesus but the idea that all Christians would be snatched up to heaven some time before that is very new.  In fact the entire premillenial dispensationalist end times doctrine has very recent origins.  Before that time, most Christians were postmillenialists and if you go all the way back to the New Testament it certainly looks like the early Christians were amillenialists in they weren't following any kind of prophetic playbook, they expected Christ to return at any time.



Have you been following the current events in American politics?  Christian legislators are doing all they can to outlaw abortion and even contraception.  After all, Christians have always believed that life begins at conception.  Except it turns out this belief isn't even as old as I am!  As The Slacktivist points out, this is A ‘biblical view’ that’s younger than the Happy Meal.  Now just to be clear, yes Catholics have for centuries held this belief.  Catholics.  Not Protestants.  Up to the 70s evangelical protestants did not believe that abortion was murder or that contraception was evil and they even quoted from the Bible to back it up.  But I guess the sexual revolution and the rise of feminism was scary enough for Protestants to put aside their differences and start agreeing with the Pope.


Once upon a time, to be Christian you had to believe that Jesus was the Son of God and that He died for your sins.  These days it seems that to be Christian you have to believe that life begins at conception, homosexuality is a sin, science can't be trusted, every word in the Bible is literally true, the Antichrist is coming, sex before marriage is a mortal sin, Christian morality must be enforced through legislation, welfare is from the devil and oh yeah, some stuff about Jesus.  Seems to me like Fundamentalist Christianity has little to no relation to the fundamentals of the Christian faith at all.  Funny how ancient and eternal truth can change over time...

Into the darkness

Yesterday someone posted an article on Facebook called "The Science of Faith".  Reading it was not good for my blood pressure.  The message was basically that science is overrated and that there are other ways of finding truth that works just as well if not better.  This type of mealy mouthed mysticism triggers me to no end but what to do about it?  I could vent in the comment section but experience has taught me that my incoherent rage at proponents of anti-science usually just leads them to shake their heads at me condescendingly while making comments like "Your blind adherence to scientism blinds you to larger truths, don't be so close minded!" or even worse, "I'll pray for you".  I could simply avoid all articles like this but where would that leave me?  To avoid everything I disagree with and only read things I already agree on will just leave me stagnant and trapped in my own conformation bias.  No, it's far better to engage with the things I disagree with.  There is always a chance I'm mistaken and this way I can be corrected.  If I'm not mistaken I can still gain a better understanding.  The problem is that when I try to engage things that piss me off I have trouble expressing myself clearly.  So then it's better for me to learn how to respond to articles like this with less blind rage and more sense.  But how to do that?  I guess I could wait for someone out there who is smarter and more informed than me to tell me what to think but that doesn't seem like a great option.  How much would I really be learning from that after all?  So I decided to instead work out a proper response here on my blog.  It may be a little rough and clumsy at times but I can't really think of a better way for me to learn how to give a clearheaded response to things I disagree with.  After all, that was what my New Year's not-resolution was all about! 

By the way, I welcome all input in this whether you agree with me or not.


OK then, here is my response to "The Science of Faith" by Nico van der Westhuizen.  Original article in bold my response in [brackets].  All pictures added by me.

I am not necessarily what you would call a “Scientist”, [up to here I agree completely but it quickly goes downhill from here...] but I am an avid student of all things unexplored and mysterious [He uses "student" in the loosest sense of the word only]. Science in many ways has become the root of all things that steer our lives in the modern world [the what now?]. And at the core of all human investigation is the yearning to explain the unexplained. 

That brings us to my point of question for this discussion, the Naturalist. As I was flipping through the numerous useless and unentertaining channels of my very expensive television subscription, I came across a scientific program explaining the Naturalist view of the world. [so far so good]

Despite being an enthusiast of science I have some reservations about what was being said during the broadcast. If I can recollect correctly the presenter claimed that he was a Naturalist by heart, one who believes that we can only know what can be scientifically tested. He based his belief on the fact that since we have made much progress in science over the last 300 years compared to the fields of Arts, Theology or Humanities, it is therefore vastly superior to other ways of “knowing.”

The very statement that we can know only that which is scientifically testable is in itself a self-refuting statement. No scientific laboratory in the world could perform any kind of experimentation to prove this statement as fact.  [See this is why I have such a hard time taking Mr vd Westhuizen here seriously.  He calls himself "an enthusiast of science" but he clearly doesn't actually understand what science is - something that's going to become much clearer as we keep going.  It seems that he thinks that the only way to verify something scientifically is with a test tube and a microscope.  Wrong!  We can totally test this scientifically using a little something called The Scientific Method.  The question is, which is the most reliable way of knowing the truth - Science, Theology, Arts or the Humanities?  Now let's observe and gather data.  On a wide range of issues, which of these has been correct most often?  Much like the unnamed Naturist, the data is bound to lead you to the hypothesis that Science is the best way of separating fact from fiction.  Now we can test this over and over again.  Science says bacteria makes you ill, Theology says it's demons.  So lets give some sick people antibiotics and some other sick people exorcisms and see who gets better.  Repeat as many times as you'd like and make some predictions using this model and see if it's accurate. This is both repeatable and falsifiable and therefore scientific]



Famous physicist Stephen Hawking wrote the following in his latest book ‘The Grand Design’. He writes, “Philosophy is dead. It has not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly in physics. As a result scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge.”

This avowal is clearly not a scientific statement; rather it is a philosophical statement about science. It is a logical inconsistency, because what he claims to be inapplicable is what he is using to prove his statement.  [Did he read past the first page?  I did and I seem to recall Dr Hawking backing that statement up with lots and lots of scientific evidence, not philosophy and handwaving.  So no, it's not logically inconsistent at all.  Science says the side with the most evidence wins, Hawking gave evidence so he wins]

Science creates many assumptions while producing its own experiments.  [No.  Some assumptions are necessary but not many.  In fact to practice good science you have to make as few assumptions as possible] So much so that many experiments cannot begin without assuming certain things.  [Yes, for example we have to assume that we exist and that reality is not some kind of computer simulation a la The Matix.  We also have to assume that our senses are mostly reliable and that the Flying Spaghetti Monster isn't tampering with our results as they are measured] These assumptions guide experimentation and are themselves not the result of experiments. So the assumption that all things are scientifically knowable and nothing is supernatural is itself a belief which can neither be asserted nor defended by the Naturalist position that all things are scientifically testable.  [WTF??  This is just wrong on so many levels!  These assumptions scientists make are not just random bullshit they pull out of thin air.  They have to be pretty well grounded and defensible because other scientists are going to check their work (peer review) and the first place they are going to try to poke holes are in the starting assumptions.  There is a reason science makes a naturalistic assumption rather than a supernatural one - supernatural claims have been tested over and over again and each time the answer turned out to be a natural one.  Assumptions like these are actually based on other experiments.  Go check out the James Randi Educational Foundation, they regularly run tests on alleged paranormal and supernatural claims and they have yet to find someone who can demonstrate such a thing for a million dollars]

So I believe that a naturalist’s assumptions are as much a matter of “faith” if not more than that of a believer who believes in the supernatural. [No, assuming that you should trust in evidence does not take as much or more faith than it takes to believe things happen magically.  For example believing that Jesus turned water into wine takes faith.  There is no natural, scientific mechanism by which to do that and no rational way to prove it therefore if you want to believe it you just have to take it on faith.  It does not take any faith on the other hand to believe that the world is round though - we can fly around it, we can send up satellites and spaceships to take a look and see for ourselves.  One of these things is not like the other]

In light of this it can then also be concluded that other forms of “knowing” are equally certain and sometimes even superior to science. [Credit where it's due, here he demonstrates what it would look like if things really worked the way he thinks they do.  If people make nonsensical assumptions and then just run with it they end up with crazy conclusions like this one.  Do tell, how are other forms of "knowing" superior to science?]

To use an example: Mathematical knowledge like 1+1=2 is inescapably true and I don’t need any experiments or any of my senses to guarantee that it is true. Similarly, the basic laws of logic are self-sustaining and don’t need any support from science.  [Here's the thing.  This example actually proves the opposite of what you think it does.  You don't know that 1+1=2 via osmosis or magic.  You know it the same way you know the basic laws of logic are true, through science.  The only reason it feels like these things are second nature to you is because you have been doing the science on this all your life.  You are NOT born with the knowledge that 1+1=2 or with the knowledge of cause and effect.  Instead you learn these things by observation, experimentation, testing and prediction - science.  At the very basis of what you know about math there is the observation that there are things and things come in amounts.  Pretty soon you learn that you can make those amounts more or less.  You learn this with toys, marbles, stones, whatever is available to you.  If you were born deaf and blind and lived alone in an empty room, you may never have any concept of basic math or logic.  Sorry but you don't know this via magic, you know this via science]

Certain universal laws of ethics are applicable and accepted without having to be proven to us through scientific tests. We “know” that abusing our children is wrong and those concepts such as mercy and kindness are virtues. [Who is your "we" kimosabe?  Have you seen the crime statistics?  A LOT of people don't seem to "know" that abusing children is wrong.  There are also no "universal laws of ethics" to speak of.  Ethics can and does vary wildly throughout time and space.  Your morals and ethics depend mostly on where (and when) you live and how you were raised, they certainly don't get magically zapped into everyone mystically.  I did a fairly long blog post on this a while back using Sleeping Beauty as an example but for now, consider someone born into an organized crime family who grew up in a culture of violence and cruelty.  Do you think they see mercy and kindness as virtues or weaknesses to be exploited?]

I do not wish to offend anyone by writing these words, [only actual fans of science will be offended at this point, don't worry about it, I doubt you know any] but I believe that we [we? srsly?] fans of science and the yet unexplained are too engrossed in finding the mechanism that works a system and are confusing it with whomever or whatever set that mechanism in motion. [How about no?  The one does not preclude the other.  There are plenty of scientific fields - physics, cosmology, evolutionary biology - that are dedicated to investigating both the mechanism and whatever set the mechanism in motion.  If you were an actual fan of science you would have known that.  Both are fascinating.  You know what's not fascinating?  Closing your eyes to the wonders of the universe and shouting "You can't explain it! It must be magic gnomes!"]

Let’s look at another example: Birds have wings in order to fly. Because we want our own set of wings or developed that same mechanism to make an airplane, we sometimes stop at the mechanism as the ultimate explanation to that phenomenon. [I'm not sure what that last sentence is even supposed to mean!  However when I think of how human beings - a species of flightless mammals - managed to overcome our biology and mastered flight (which btw, not everything with wings can even do!) I am overcome with awe and wonder!  Think about it!  We can fly faster than the speed of sound!  We have flown to the moon!  We dreamed it and we did it!  Yet somehow all that leaves him with a profound sense of "meh" because that's just boring mechanics and not the divine purpose of wings or whatever]

Rather we should also pause to think who gave those wings to the birds and for what ultimate purpose. [Ohhhh now I get it!  All that ultimate purpose stuff was about God somehow.  Well I for one would LOVE to know the ultimate God given purpose of wings and remember, it can't be something stupid like "flying" because that's besides the point somehow] Because we are only interested in technology and not the whole truth we have gotten our languages confused. We are beginning to treat the natural world or the mechanism as the agent who contains the ultimate purpose. [This just seems like a case of weapons grade projection to me.  Creationists and other proponents of anti-science are always telling you how much they love science when all they really love are the fruits of science - all the technology and advancements that make our lives easier and longer.  They don't like science itself.  Because science doesn't care what you believe or what you would like to be true.  Science is a process that can find the truth no matter what that truth is.  You start messing around with science and next thing you know all that cool, mystical "ultimate purpose" stuff may end up not seeming so profound anymore.  Real scientists on the other hand aren't in it for the tech, they are in it for the journey of discovery]

How do you test the love between a mother and a child? [Well thank goodness not everyone was satisfied with that Hallmark card drivel.  See not all mothers love their children.  Some mothers go a little nuts sometimes and drown their babies.  Good thing then science didn't just chalk it up to "mysterious ways" because now postpartum depression can be diagnosed and treated] How do you explain the spontaneous explosion of matter into what we now call the universe? [Work in progress.  There may be much we don't know yet but scientists are actually working on that over at CERN.  Fun fact, it's thanks to work on particle accelerators that we ended up with things like MRI machines and the internet]  Sometimes we should just accept that some things are better left unexplained and mysterious. It’s more fun that way too. Imagine a world in which all things were revealed to all men…not that magical anymore is it? [You know that world you're fantasizing about?  The one without all these stupid "explanations" and "scientific inquiry" where everything was mysterious and magical instead?  We had that!  It was called the Dark Ages and it wasn't a great time to be alive.  No one had the slightest idea how the world worked but hey, at least they had art and philosophy and theology!  But don't fret, I hear that in parts of Nigeria they reject science in favour of the supernatural so you could always move there if you don't mind occasionally having to torture and kill a child for being a witch!  I'm sorry, was that rude?  Am I being offensive?  Good, because this was an offensive article!  You know what rejecting science in favour of "other ways of knowing" gets you?  People people being robbed of potential happiness, suffering and even dying needlessly.  Our supernatural superstitions landed us in the deepest, darkest holes humanity has ever been in and it was only by the light of reason and science that we managed to claw our way out of it.  To suggest we turn our backs on that and return to the darkness is a deeply offensive notion.  Oh, I know you don't mean it like that.  You just think talk of "other ways of knowing" and "deeper ultimate meanings" make you sound oh so damn deep and thoughtful and spiritual.  But it doesn't.  It makes you sound ignorant and clueless.  The world is incredible and the universe a place of infinite wonder but you can't see that.  You miss the true beauty of your garden because you would rather imagine it has fairies in it than learn of it's true magnificence.  You refuse to see the awesome wonder of reality because you would rather believe in the smallness of magic and superstition]

I think it is for that reason that C.S. Lewis said “Men became scientific because they expected Law in Nature, and they expected Law in Nature because they believed in a Legislator”.  [Right, scientists of old like Newton, Kepler and Galileo assumed that if God created the universe then it followed that the universe would make sense and therefore they should be able to understand it.  Modern anti-scientists do the opposite.  They say that since God did it we shouldn't try to understand it or bother investigating it.  We've come a long way baby!]




OK so I lost my cool there for a while but at least I managed to get through the whole thing without once using the word "fucktard" so there's that.   It just upsets me when people act as if science takes all the mystery and joy out of the world.  Have these people ever listened to someone like Carl Sagan or Brian Cox (the rockstar scientist, not the curmudgeonly actor) talk about science?  Science doesn't steal the mystery away, it gives us the tools to appreciate it in full!  The more we explore the more we find, each question we answer leads to countless new questions!  Science robs you of nothing, it gives you the keys to the castle.  You know what does rob you?  Closing your eyes to all that by making up your own ignorant bullshit and calling that "a different way of knowing".  Sure, that way you can get to live comfortably in your own little cave, blissfully unaware of the greatness that is right outside (but at least your little pet beliefs will be totally safe so there's that).  You would be missing out on so much though!  The self made prison world of superstition and fairytales will rob you of all the wonder of the universe while offering nothing but a tiny portion of pathetic mysticism.  Trust me, once you get a taste of the real mysteries of the world, it's hard to go back!

The Worst Crutch To Lean On

This month has not been a good one for me as far as hero worship is concerned.  First Donald Miller, one of my all time favourite Christian authors, writes this article claiming that the biggest problem with the church is that it's too focused on scholarship and education.  That just rubbed me the wrong way for a lot of reasons but eventually I calmed myself down and decided not to vent about it on my blog (though I may have left a snarky comment or two on his facebook fanpage's link to the story).  There is a chance I'm over-reacting and the article is written in pretty ambiguous/slippery language.  On the one hand, I can agree - if all the church does is argue dogma and split theological hairs and it never helps anyone then what good is it?  On the other hand though it seemed to me to be talking down to academia in general, calling education pointless.  Again, that could just be me.  It did seem to echo the populous notion that education and scholarly pursuits are for out of touch elitists and that real, salt of the earth, common sense folks don't need none of that thar book larnin' to know what is right.  Also, pretty sure that the problem among Christians is not too much education, if anything it's the opposite!  I'll get back to that before the end of this post.

Anyway, so just today The Slacktivist, one of my favourite bloggers in the universe, discussed the very Pat Robertson video I posted in my previous post and he (unlike me) came out in support of Pat.  Actually I've been meaning to do a follow up on what I wrote previously because I did get thinking on the matter.  For one thing, I'll give the Slacktivist that much, the video shows a far softer and less dogmatic Pat Robertson than the one who usually comes on TV to kick suffering people when they are down.  There did actually appear to be a glimmer of empathy in his reply.  I still disagree with his advice though.  The Slacktivist post did make me realise that I should perhaps just clarify a tad and expand on what I said.

First of all, like I took pains to point out, I have nothing but the deepest empathy for people who has a loved one suffering from Alzheimers.  Pat was right, it's a truly hateful disease.  Frankly if I was diagnosed with it, I'd go the same route as Terry Pratchett and choose to die as myself, not an incoherent mess that couldn't even be called a shadow of who I used to be.  But I get that is not what everyone would choose for various reasons and that is why there needs to be some frank discussion and planning for the future when a disease like this is diagnosed.  If the subject of the letter to Pat Robertson and his wife had sat down together and discussed the way forward and she agreed that it would be best that eventually he move her into a facility and move on with his life I would agree with Pat's advice.  BUT - and that's a big but - this was clearly not the case.  This man's wife went into that long night fully confident that her husband was going to take care of her the way he promised in his wedding vows and then he changed his mind.  He started off taking care of her, got frustrated, found someone else and is now going to move on.  That, I can never agree with.  If you said you were going to be there to the end then you better be there to the end.  The commitment you make is the commitment you stick to.  That is why I found Pat's advice so offensive, because it was such an after the fact rationalization made in order to justify and excuse a course of action that has already been taken in bad faith. 

Just a little bit of honest planning would have changed the way I responded to that situation.  Of course planning ahead was never going to happen, much the same way it didn't happen when my grandmother got sick.  The problem is that just like the man with the sick wife, my family are fundamentalist, Pentecostal Christians.  People like us, when faced with dread medical conditions, tend not to plan for the future the way we should because we have a crutch we lean on.  Unfortunately this crutch is weak and brittle and can never give the support it promises.  It doesn't look it though, it looks ancient and noble and trustworthy.  We are all taught early on to trust in it completely.  It's not a cheap crutch either, it asks a lot from us.  It asks that we cheerfully deny reality, that we stay positive and believe and trust and above all never give in to the temptation of accepting the facts.  This crutch is faith that God will heal.  This crutch will make you fall on your face every time.  It may ask for a lot but it will give you nothing but disappointment and bitterness.  It won't even let you have that though, you're not allowed to be disappointed or bitter or voice any doubt in the claim that the crutch is sturdy and true no matter how many times it has demonstrably failed to be that.  So really, it takes everything from you and leaves you with nothing.

I remember a lot of things about my grandmothers disease.  Some of the worst memories however are not the one's where she didn't know who I was.  The darkest memories are of my grandpa furiously praying over her, rebuking the devil and praying the healing power of God over her.  My grandpa leaned on that crutch more and more as my grandma got worse and worse and sure as day, it dropped him on his face every single time.  My grandma never got better, why would she, she had Altzheimers!  It's an incurable, soul crushing disease!  It's not caused by devils and it's not healed by the hand of God.

My dad used the same crutch for over a decade when my mom's kidneys started failing.  There was fasting, and praying - so much praying - she was anointed with oil, demons were bound, healing was claimed and...  well what do you think?  That crutch kept collapsing but we kept believing in it right up to the day she died.  Also, my dad stuck with my mom all through this decade plus long illness which I knew wasn't easy just like my grandpa did.  So again, while I have tons of empathy for someone living with a loved one with an incurable disease I will never have sympathy for you if you decide to call it quits because it's too hard on you.  That choice runs contrary to my very DNA.

I too leaned on that crutch and for most of my life pretended it wasn't as worm eaten and rotten as it demonstrably was.  I trusted in it as a child when my mother and grandmother were ill, just like the rest of my family. I leaned on it while my dad lay dying in the hospital.  I leaned on it desperately when I got cancer - even though I should have known better by then.  I don't like to talk about my own disease, mainly because what I faced wasn't as bad as what my parents and grandparents had to deal with.  I had the weak, sissy kind of cancer that spreads slowly and grows at a snails pace.  The only reason it almost killed me was because I kept going to prayer lines and healing services instead of a hospital.

If you or a loved one is sick, don't pray about it, go see a doctor and get help.  As someone who grew up hearing countless sermons about how we're supposed to put our faith in God and not reality I know that won't be easy to do, so why not start small?  Try this simple test.  Next time you get a headache, pray about it but do nothing else.  Did the headache go away?  How long did it take?  Now, if you get another headache pray again but this time also take some painkillers.  Pretty sure the headache went away pretty quickly this time, right?  OK, now repeat this a third time but this time just take the painkillers, don't pray at all.  Any difference?  It's a simple experiment that anyone can do and it's bound to demonstrate reliably which works best:  prayer or medicine.  Jesus Himself said in Luke 16:10 that: "Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dis honest with much."  Doesn't it then follow that if modern medicine is trustworthy to fix headaches you should also trust it if you have cancer?

See, this is why Donald Miller's article got to me.  Me and my family trusted and leaned on a rotten, unreliable crutch not because the church is run by teachers and scholars but rather because the teaching we got from church was no good and definitely not scholarly.  I think if anything that points to a lack of good teaching and scholarship in church, not an abundance!

Now if you are a Christian and you've actually read this far, congratulations.  I really didn't think you would because this post moved into heretical territory real quick!  I appreciate you hearing me out at least, unless you were just skimming this post while planning a rebuke in the comment section.  Anyway, maybe you know exactly what I'm talking about, maybe you've tried this crutch and fallen on your face many times too.  Maybe you know that feeling of having that gnawing feeling that there is no help coming from above, only to have to convince yourself that somehow it will work out because the very idea is blasphemous.  I've been there.  So for you I offer this compromise.  Pray, OK?  Pray all you want.  But please, treat prayer as a complimentary remedy, not an alternative to seeking medical attention (or in the case of incurable disease, realistically planning for the future at least).  I get it, lots of people call that having "weak faith" and will blame you for the inevitable happening.  Forget those guys.  Trust me, when the inevitable happens anyway (as it is wont to do) they won't have anything for you either except platitudes and perhaps more guilt.  I may have only had the sissy cancer but I've met lots of people with the scary real deal when I go in for treatments.  I've seen that for many, trusting God to heal them offers much needed hope and strength when undergoing treatment.  I'm not a complete dick, if you need to hold on to that crutch for comfort I'm not going to tell you that you shouldn't.  That is really up to you.  Just don't you ever lean on it exclusively.  If you do that, it's pretty much guaranteed to fail you.  No matter how many amazing testimonies you may have heard about miracles happening, take this from a real person who has lived through some real events that were anything but miraculous.  Prayer alone is no substitute for treatment.  That way lies nothing but bitterness, disappointment and disillusion, not to mention a deep well of anger you're not going to be allowed to acknowledge.

Uncle Arthur Lies About Science

When I saw a hilariously terrible bit of scientific misinformation called "Did Charlie make a monkey out of you?" over on Scotteriology, it reminded me of my very first encounter with the Theory of Evolution.  When I was a wee toddler my parents used to read to me from a delightfully traumatizing series called "Oom Attie se Slaaptyd-stories" (better known to the rest of the world as "Uncle Arthur's Bedtime Stories") by the Seventh Day Adventist author Arthur S Maxwell.  To say that this left me with a slightly incorrect impression of what evolution actually claimed would be a massive understatement.  I remember that even as a five year old, I was stunned that people could believe something as utterly ridiculous as evolution!  Since teaching evolution was a taboo under the state run Christian National Education in the Old South Africa I was a committed young earth creationists until deep into my grownup years.  In my defense though, I went all those years hearing only the version of the Theory of Evolution as told by Christian Apologists - so really I had no idea what evolution was really all about.  To may shame it took me almost three decades before I actually bothered to look it up for myself and found out what science actually had to say without the filter of fundamentalist Christianity blocking my reception. 

So for nostalgia's sake I decided to dig up the story and read it again.  I have to say, it was worse than I remembered!  When it comes to accurately portraying the theory of evolution, Uncle Arthur makes Kent Hovind look like Richard Dawkins!  I can't describe to you just how incredibly dishonest it is because if I tried you would think I'm making things up.  So instead I decided to just post the entire story right here.  Now I admit I'm not up to speed on copyright law but I'm fairly certain one is allowed to post someone else's work provided you cite it properly and don't claim it as your own.  If I'm wrong about that, please do correct me.  Also, since I only have the Afrikaans copy of the story and was unable to find the original English online I had to translate it myself.  So then what follows is not the original words of Arthur S Maxwell but rather the Afrikaans translation by C. van der M. van Wyk translated back into English by me.  The original story ('n Storie Wat Nie Waar Is Nie) appears on page 71 - 75 of book 5 of the Bedtime stories series.  Sit down when reading this, don't drink anything that will burn your sinus cavities if you snort it by accident or ruin your computer if you spit it.  I promise that I translated this as accurately and as close to the original text as possible, keeping the grammar, punctuation and sentence structure as far as possible.  It may appear at times that I tweaked it to make it sound more ridiculous but I assure you I took no such liberties - this is the exact story I heard as a child. 

BTW, if anyone can get me the original text of this story I would very much appreciate it!

Not even kidding!

"A story that isn’t true
copyright Arthur S Maxwell

I don’t mean that my story isn’t true.  On the contrary, it’s very reliable.  See, I know the boy who told it to me, and he wouldn’t tell a lie to save his life.  I’m going to call him “David” to protect his true identity.

David came back from school one day and told his dad the story he heard that day.  It went like this:

In the history class the teacher wanted to tell start right from the very beginning of things and so he told this funny little story.  He said that life on earth began as a little bit of slime in the ocean.  This bit of slime grew and grew and eventually broke up into little pieces.  One piece decided to become a fish, another piece a plant, and another crawled out on land and decided to become a worm.

From this first fish, first plant and first worm came all other fishes, plants and animals.  At least that’s what the teacher said.  Then he tried to follow the history of the worm until, billions and billions of years later, it became an animal with legs!  How ridiculous!  This worm, he said, started crawling until he grew a wart on his belly.  This wart later became a leg.  Some worms got four warts and so grew four legs.  Others got many warts and they turned into centipedes.

Animals got eyes, he said, because the light of the sun shone on them.  The sun burned a freckle on them and the freckle later became an eye.

Then as millions of years went by, some of the worms whose warts became legs turned into dogs, some into cats, some into leopards and lions and tigers and giraffes and so on.  The teacher then told them that one group of worms later developed arms and legs and became monkeys.  The most advanced of the monkeys were playing with sticks one day.  By chance they happened to rub the sticks together and made a spark.  That is how they learned to make fire and the warmth of the fire caused their hair to fall out and they became people.

So then, this is the story that David’s teacher told him that day.  It’s a story that is told to children the world over.  But, it is not a true story.  Do not believe it!

It’s not true, because God tells us in the Bible that He made all things.  They didn’t “evolve” over millions and billions of years from a speck of slime in the ocean.  He made everything Himself through His wisdom and Omnipotence.  We read in the Psalms:  “By the Word of the LORD the heavens were made, their starry host by the breath of His mouth. … For He spoke, and it came to be; He commanded, and it stood firm.” (Ps 33:6,9).  Regarding mankind we read:  “So God created mankind in His own Image, in the Image of God He created them; male and female He created them.” (Gen 1:27). 

See just how ridiculous this untrue story sounds that’s being told to so many boys and girls today?  If you just think about it you may just burst out laughing!  That first speck of slime in the ocean, who put it there?  Who made the sea so that it could grow there?  Who made the land upon which the first worm crawled when it became tired of the ocean?

And just think of all those poor worms with the warts under their bellies.  How did the warts form on just the right places so that legs could form on a spot where they would be useful?  And why didn’t they get more warts on their legs so they could stick out in all directions?

Sounds ridiculous doesn’t it?  And just think about those eyes!  Oh dear!  The sun shone on the freckle until an eye formed they say.  But why did the sun have to pick a freckle right next to the nose?  And then again another freckle right on the other side of the nose as well?  Why not a freckle on the back of his head, on one of his legs or maybe on his tail?  Why didn’t eyes grow all over the body?

Also, if it really was the light of the sun that changed the freckles into eyes, why didn’t it make them strong enough to look into the sun?  Why did these same sunbeams have to go and make eyelids to keep the light out?  Finally, what about those poor monkeys who supposedly changed into people.  They lost their hair because they invented fire and didn’t need hair to keep them warm?  No way!  Why didn’t they lose the hair on their heads as well then?  And why don’t cats lose their hair today if they sleep in front of the fireplace?  And why do monkeys in warm climates still have their hair?

No children, this story isn’t just untrue but it also sounds like nonsense.  It was thought up by people who didn’t love the Bible and tried to find a different explanation for the origins of things.  If you ask me I think their story is a thousand times harder to believe than the simple Biblical story of creation."

Have you ever in your life seen a strawman brutalized quite like this?  It's like Uncle Arthur is actually an Atheist missionary in disguise!  It would be pure genius actually, because if you want kids to realize that their religious leaders are lying to them/don't know what they are talking about/are ridiculously ignorant about things they claim to be knowledgeable about, then tell them a story as ridiculously false as this that can be easily demolished with but a handful of actual facts.  I can promise you, they will never trust their church again.

To be read ironically by adults, never seriously to children!

How the media makes sausage

I'm feeling a little shocked by my own naivety right now.  If you asked me if I thought the media was sometimes dishonest in the way they told a story I would have immediately said that, yes they most certainly are!  Yet despite that, if I saw someone saying something on TV or heard them say it on the radio I believed it to be accurate.  Quotes in print I'm easily skeptical of, thanks to countless encounters with Creationist quote mining but somehow when I see video my skepticism gets short circuited.  I knew that reporters make edits but I never really knew how to spot them so I usually just trusted whatever I saw.

Not anymore.  British reporter Peter Hadfield (aka youtuber Potholer54) posted this video sharing the tricks of the trade.  Now that I've seen how they do it I'm definitely going to be more vigilant in future!  Granted, not all edits are malicious - I'd like to think that most are simply made due to time constraints - but even an innocent editing mistake can completely alter a quote.  Point is, seeing is not believing! 

So if you're brave enough to take a peek behind the curtain, here is Potholer54's video on the tricks of the journalistic trade:

(Video apparently blocked in the UK and Ireland for copyright reasons, unblocked version available here)

The Tyranny of Evidence

In the wake of Prop 8 being overturned a lot of footage flooded the airwaves and internet featuring word battles between the proponents and the opponents of gay marriage.  One piece featuring Tony Perkins and David Boies however managed to transcend the issue:




In case you didn't feel like watching the video, the bit I'm referring to was the following statement by David Boies:

"It's easy to sit around and debate and throw around opinions -- appeal to people's fear and prejudice, cite studies that either don't exist or don't say what you say they do. In a court of law you've got to come in and you've got to support those opinions. You've got to stand up under oath and cross-examination. And what we saw at trial is that it's very easy for the people who want to deprive gay and lesbian citizens the right to vote, to make all sorts of statements in campaign literature or in debates where they can't be cross-examined.

But when they come into court and they have to support those opinions and they have to defend those opinions under oath and cross-examination, those opinions just melt away. And that's what happened here. There simply wasn't any evidence. There weren't any of those studies. There weren't any empirical studies. That's just made up. That's junk science.

... A witness stand is a lonely place to lie. And when you come into court, you can't do that. And that's what we proved."

 What he said here is true for so much more than just the issue of gay marriage.  Creationists, Conspiracy theorists, Holocaust deniers, Climate Change "skeptics", Anti-Vaxers - they all claim that the facts and evidence support their position.  On their websites, literature and in debates they confidently proclaim that the truth is on their side.  Yet every time they actually land in court and they are forced to tell the "truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth" it all seems to collapse like a house of cards.  For a fantastic example, see the Kitzmiller v Dover Area School District.  The Intelligent Design community finally got their day in court and they fell apart spectacularly.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinions but not to their own facts.  Sure, it's easy enough to claim to have facts but the funny thing about facts is that they can be tested and verified.  That is why proponents of many "alternative" viewpoints prefer to spend their time yapping about how "the mainstream" is suppressing the truth instead of actually backing their claims with facts.  That is why (I think) the Discovery Institute prefers to spend their funds on literature, lectures and debates instead of any lab work.  The lab, like the court is a place where evidence trumps all.  And when the evidence is not on your side you tend to stay as far away from it as possible.

Life under the tyranny of evidence is not always a kind and cozy affair but I would take it over the alternative any day!