Splendid Elles

Today I got done with my final exams for my college classes, was hanging around, when I heard that MUFON (Mutual UFO Network) was doing some sort of lecture on campus. I figured, why not? Maybe they had some evidence that would shake my view of the world… Eh… maybe not. At the very least, I should be open minded, right?

So I went. It was a lecture by a Native American named Rainbow Eagle.

Before I continue, I feel I need to make the following disclaimer, because I’ll essentially be calling the man an ignunt fool.

Rainbow Eagle, you have a great personality. You are a very nice person. Very friendly. Humble. And you have a really awesome name. I wish I’d been named something like… Rainbow Jelly Fish… or… Sparkling Eagle.

So, we saw a video of some guy speaking in Spanish (with English voice-overs) about how apparently their belief (which has allegedly been verified by science) is that humans were planted here some 12,000 years ago by aliens. That’s 6,000 more years than the young earth creationists think we’ve been here. Not too bad.

And then, the guy in the video started talking about… wait for it… wait for it…

Quantum Mechanics!

What a surprise. And you know those words that New Age gurus use so much when talking about quantum mechanics? Vibration, frequency, energy? Yup. All those words were there.

See, we can only experience certain frequencies, but some people can experience other frequencies, and therefore see into parallel universes.

…!

When the video ended, I asked “is our species the only species to have been ‘planted’ here?” Seems like a good question to ask. Why would only humans be planted?

He was very confused by the question. He asked me “do you mean, are we the only specie to have been planted here?”

…!

This takes both scientific and grammatical ignorance. He didn’t really have an answer for that, anyway.

And it moved on…

He said that there were four races originally planted here. Not only that, but these original races were different colours. Native Americans used to be red. Blacks used to be blue. Asians used to be green. And whites used to be… transparent. That’s right. Transparent.

No. I have no idea how he knows this.

Rainbow Eagle presented us with three theories of the origin of humans.

1. Aliens put us here to mine gold for them, until we rebelled. So, they genetically programmed us with loyalty to them so that we’d think of them as gods.
2. Aliens came and helped humans develop technology, so we worshiped them because we thought that that was a very nice thing to do.
3. Evolution.

I have no idea how he came up with 1 and 2, but he said that number 3 was right out. Well what do you expect? His understanding of evolution was that it is “Man-to-ape. Somehow an ape stood up, lost its hair, got more brainpower, or whatever all that technical stuff is.” No, we shared a common ancestor with the apes. That common ancestor may have been very ape-like. He’s completely leaving out mutation and natural selection in this over-simplified “explanation”.

“Now we know what the problem with evolution is.”

Some woman in the room piped up, “missing link!”

Here I was thinking I was just in a room full of UFO enthusiasts. When did I end up in a room full of cdesign proponentsists?

Missing links. A perfectly valid argument… if used before the 1920s.

I raised my hand again. I’m pretty sure I was starting to annoy the people in the room because I was talking about (gasp!) actual science!

“What about Homo erectus, Australopithicus afarensis, Homo neanderthalensis?”

“Well, those show that there was an evolutionary trail leading up to us, but then you suddenly have fully formed humans out of nowhere!”

…!

“Why do we share 99% of our genome with the chimps?”

No answer.

After this lecture, he told me that he would try to fit it all together to fit his theories. This is part of the scientific method. When new evidence arises, you see if you can modify your theories to fit it. If not, you have to accept that your theory, no matter how fond you are of it, is useless and it’s back to the drawing board.

But something tells me that he’s just going to cling to it. I mean, what’s more attractive than having your ancestors come from the stars?

How about this…

Way, way, way back when, a self-replicating molecule formed. And just because certain configurations of self-replicating molecules were better at making more copies of themselves than others, selection pressure was applied to it to create a remarkable diversity of wonderful life. Among these lifeforms are humans like you, and me, who were able to write poetry, music, make art. But even better, we are able to think and create science to accurately understand how we came to be.

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

Charles Robert Darwin

Purposefully left title-less.

Alright, alright… I wasn’t thinking at all when I wrote a post and titled it “Creationists Are Pure Evil.” I have since renamed it to My Thoughts on Creationism. Why? One too many people, this time, George Paul Davis III, have missed the point of the post because of the title. Please read the post (and not by title only) before reading the rest so that this all makes more sense.

Angry? No. Amused? A little. However, it’s not the creationists who are amusing — it’s people who get so angry over this stuff. I think it’s funny because the anger seems baseless and programmed rather than genuine.

The first thing a person should do upon feeling “angry” about this is to ask him/herself why they feel that way.

Are you angry because the children do not get to choose what they are taught in their system of education? If that is the case, then I return that question back to you. Do your children choose the curriculum they are given in their own system of education? I was never asked about the curriculum given to me as a child.

I was given several doses of misinformation during my education. In public school, I was taught that Christopher Columbus discovered America as he was trying to prove that the Earth was round. The idea that Christopher Columbus would have had to prove the shape of the Earth to anyone in his time is, of course, nothing more than romantic fancy presented to children in elementary school as a fact (at least, it was taught as a fact in my day — Second Grade/1986). I was also given a set story about things like the Revolutionary War only to grow up and discover that different countries often have very different histories that are used to explain single events (i.e., the British explanation of the Revolutionary War and the American “victory” is quite different). Few people are “angry” over these bits of misinformation, so why is misinformation about dinosaurs so aggravating?

My guess, then, would be that people are not actually angry about the fact that these children do not get to choose whether or not they are given facts as education. Other than that, I don’t really see what exists in this situation that would conjure “anger.”

The worst that will happen to these kids is that they will grow up having been given false information about the origin of species. They’ll grow up thinking that the Earth is 6,000 years old, that men rode dinosaurs, and that lions are meant to eat grass. Big deal. Since when is being wrong such a tragedy? Who here has never lost an argument? These kids will face bigger issues as they grow up – this crap will be the least of their worries.

Even in making that statement, I am overlooking not only my personal experiences with this subject matter, but the confession of the museum scientist in the clip. He was raised to think as a Creationist, yet he does not. I was similarly raised, and I don’t follow the assumptions made by “Creation Science,” either. These kids will have the ability to choose what they believe when they’re older and are exposed to more materials.

Why, then, would this situation create so much “anger?” Religion. Religion has become a hot-topic for people. There is a kind of Retro-Inquisition going on, right now. Religion makes certain people angry – even when they aren’t directly affected by it.

It’s true that I don’t really expect much from the human animal and think that most of these kids will not become enlightened by science as they mature into adults. Rather, I think they will simply adhere to the easiest option – to stick to what one already “knows.”

Easy options are amongst the human being’s favorite type. It’s easy to accept information without proper contemplation, so people do it. For instance, your anger over this particular subject suggests that you blame Creation, an abstract concept created by HUMANS, for certain evils in the world. That’s just naïve.

Religion, and Creation through it, is just a story. It isn’t evil, it isn’t good, it isn’t anything without a human being’s manipulation to create, change or control it. In other words, “religion doesn’t kill people — people do.” You can’t be angry that these children are being given Creation as education without being angry at Creation as a concept. It doesn’t make sense to be angry at abstract concepts, but it does make sense to be angry at people who use them to do evil. What evil is being done here? Some kids are being made wrong. Is that really evil? They won’t grow up to be archeologists. It’s hard to find work as an archeologist, anyway. Thinking that the Flintstones is a documentary won’t prevent these kids from accomplishing great things. You can think that the Grand Canyon was made in a weekend and still be a successful and talented medical doctor – I’ve seen it.

If you are angry at Creation and Religion – or so it seems — because they can potentially cause evil, then you must also be angry at the concept of home-schooling for making this kind of an education possible. Further, you should be angry at the concept that individuals are allowed to make decisions for their own children, because it enables concepts like home-schooling which in-turn enables insane curriculums wherein children are taught Creation as a fact. If you are angry at these concepts then you must also be angry at an innumerable number of abstract concepts in order to make any logical sense as a human being.

Religion is not evil, it’s just silly. People are evil. Teaching kids that snakes can talk is not evil. A person who uses faith in Religion to manipulate children into sexual situations is evil. A person who uses faith in Religion to manipulate people into committing mass murder/suicide is evil. A person who uses faith in Religion to manipulate people into giving him/her free money is just a jerk. A person who uses faith in Religion to manipulate movies stars into believing that they are possessed by alien ghosts so they will give him/her lots of free money, I must begrudgingly admit, is kind of talented.

You’re not angry. You’re bored.

Thanks

Ah… “The first thing a person should do upon feeling “angry” about this is to ask him/herself why they feel that way.” For those of you that read the post, you will notice that the entire post was explaining why I felt angry.

No, the point of the post was not that I think that creationism/creationists are evil. I get annoyed with because it distorts the truth. For those of you who read it by title only, I will tell you what the content of the post actually was.

I talked about how much I love science. I talked about how passionate I am about what is true. That is why it broke my heart so much to see it distorted. That is why it made me so very upset. I’m sorry that you can’t understand that I’m not bored, but that I’m passionate.

Even if you can not understand that passion, do you believe that people have a right to know the truth? Do we not despise totalitarian governments that control information, thus brain-washing the people? Why doesn’t this apply to children who’s parents control the information they are fed?

But, yes. A lot of fault falls upon me because I wasn’t thinking when I chose the post title. If I learned anything from The Selfish Gene it was that people pay little attention to content and more to titles. Is this because of laziness, or genuine mistakes? I can understand how titles will make people pre-disposed to read things that aren’t really there. Perhaps it is my fault that people did not understand the post if they actually did read it.

Intrigued by the Pharyngula post, I took a look at CrevoScope.

You have “will” which you can spend on either researching in the “library” (you click on something that says “read about science” and then you don’t read about science and you gain knowledge), or researching in the “church” (you click on something that says “study” and then you don’t learn anything about the Bible and you gain knowledge). Then, when you feel you have enough knowledge, you debate people.

It doesn’t really matter how much personal intellect you have when it comes to “winning” in the game. This is the way my second “debate” went after I’d spent most of my “will” in the “library”.

You turn toward your_mom_was_an_ape and say “How could Noah possibly fit all those animals into a small boat?”
your_mom_was_an_ape replies to your argument with “Well… um… all that matters is that he did!”
Elles smiles with victory.

your_mom_was_an_ape says his own argument: “If we evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?”
You think for a moment and say “Scientists say that we evolved from chimps, not monkeys! I guess that God of yours didn’t decide to give you a brain so you could realise this, huh?”
your_mom_was_an_ape nods, enjoying seeing his opponent make a complete fool of himself.

Once again, you challenge your opponent: “How could Noah possibly fit all those animals into a small boat?”
your_mom_was_an_ape replies to your argument with “Well… um… all that matters is that he did!”
Elles smiles with victory.

Elles wins the debate!
You gain 10 exp points

Huh?

An otherwise good (for us, bad for Stein) review spoiled by this paragraph.

Unlike Moore, Stein doesn’t resort to (many) cheap shots. He gives the opposition - stoutly represented by “The God Delusion” author Richard Dawkins - ample opportunity to make its case. In getting Dawkins to concede that there might be some intelligent source to life, Stein scores big.

I had to go outside and scream, as a cloud of birds shot upwards at the wretched noise I made.

Stein asked Dawkins to imagine how Intelligent Design could be possible. Dawkins fell into the dishonestly set up trap and gave panspermia as an example. As I have said before, Dawkins does not believe in panspermia (see River Out of Eden, The Ancestor’s Tale, and his Royal Institution lectures), but believes that it’s possible. The reason why it’s more possible than the Judeo-Christian god is because the aliens would have to have come about through natural causes.

OK, so panspermia would make an intelligent source of life possible, but it’s not nearly as foolish as Intelligent Design really is.

Everybody knows that Intelligent Design is just another faux name for creationism. Anybody who denies that can take a good look at my transitional fossil…

cdesign proponentsists

The Intelligent Design being pushed for in our schools and science is about the Judeo-Christian god creating life. Not a scientific theory that would be supported by panspermia.

The only reason why otherwise intelligent people are crediting Stein with scoring big is he’s actually managed to make good propaganda by making a fabrication shortly afterward saying “What? Richard Dawkins thinks that Intelligent Design is a valid scientific possibility?”

No, you pig-faced dumb ass. Richard Dawkins thinks that panspermia is a valid (questionably) scientific possibility since it does not ultimately postulate supernatural sky fairies. However, Occam’s razor applies to it only a little less than it applies to your fairy tale. Go back to selling eye drops, and stop demonstrating your foolish ignorance of science.

If Stein was hoping for a sympathetic audience for his film, you’d expect it to be an evangelical Christian, right?

Well, not s’much.

My friend, Created Rationalist, has posted his review of the film after his church was invited to see Expelled. It’s not very favourable. He deals at a much greater length with all the cases Stein attempted to present in the film than I did.

But some of those atheist and science bloggers are mean!

Well… yes… Yes I am. How exactly am I supposed to feel about being equated to a Nazi?

Now, unfortunately, there are a few things I must take issue with.

I agree;
–that there is some evidence one way or another of Intelligent Agency in the universe
–that the scientists don’t always do a very good job at explaining how they think life began through natural causes
–that Atheism and Philosophical Naturalism are inherently metaphysical and unprovable
–that many atheists are incorrectly equating atheism with science and trying to create a flase dichotomy of sorts
– that there is an active movement among atheists to devalue religion.
–that science (Evolution in particular) can be used to rationalize evil deeds such as killing off the weak

I suppose that evolution does not disprove god (the deist god), though I would have to say that it does contradict the Judo-Christian god who is supposedly playing an active role in the creation of life on Earth.

For example, if I were guiding evolution along, with the intent of making man in my own image, I would have avoided completely unnecessary evolutionary off-shoots such as dinosaurs. It was only after the dinosaurs had gone extinct that the age of mammals occurred, eventually leading to us. But it took another… oh… about 200 million years before this could happen.

Now, it is true that we’re not sure exactly how life happened, but we have a few equally plausible theories of how it could have started. Essentially, all you need is carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, and oxygen to create organic molecules, and then you need a self-replicating molecule for selection pressure to take place. The main scientific controversies over the origin of life have to do with whether DNA or RNA came first, or if it started in the primordial soup or elsewhere (like around hydrothermal vents).

Contrary to what Ben Stein would have you believe, most scientists do not really believe in panspermia, though it certainly is the most plausible way in which you could stretch ID to be true. For the most part, all scientific theories of the origin of life are plausible and do not need to postulate supernatural jazz.

Now, as for saying that Atheism and naturalism are supernatural and unprovable… Well, you’re calling naturalism supernatural. You can’t get much of a better oxymoron than supernatural naturalism. Naturalism is based on what is observable and empirically testable. Supernaturalism is based on faith. Very different.

I suppose that you can do science and still be a religious person (Francis Crick, Newton, Kenneth Miller), but you’d definitely have to compartmentalize your brain severely. I don’t really buy into the whole NOMA, or “ways of knowing” relativist stuff. You can seek truth, or you can compartmentalize and only partly seek truth.

Alright, you got me. I’m trying to devalue religion. I was an in-the-closet devaluer of religion and now I’m out.

OK, fine. I am actively trying to devalue religion. What’s wrong with that?

And as for saying that science (evolution in particular) can be used to justify evil though it does no necessarily lead to Nazism…

Evolution by natural selection was not a necessity for eugenics. If you think about it, we had eugenics around for thousands of years before Darwin had the brilliance to think of nature as doing the selection. Darwin did not come up with selection. He came up with selection by nature, which is very different from a human selecting traits that he/she likes.

Before natural selection, we were breeding pigeons, dogs, cabbages for traits that we liked. This was artificial selection, the real necessary component to eugenics.

Hitler, though he tried to make it seem like science justified him, was scientifically ignorant about some things.

For one thing, he was a racist. There is no science supporting racism. Also, based on what I read from Mein Kampf, he seemed to think that being in different races was almost equivalent to being in different species. He begins his chapter on nation and race by talking about how animals in different species can’t mate with animals in different species… and applies that to people in different races, saying that hybrids are inferior.

Being half-Chinese and half-American, I took offence to that. I take offence to anybody who says that Hitler was justifying his madness with science as that would be saying the thing that I love most passionately justifies saying I’m inferior.

I think we should make a clear distinction between Hitler’s motivations and his justifications. Hitler’s motivation was a pathological hate for Jews. His justifications were that he was “breeding a super-human race”. Whether he actually thought he could do that, I don’t know, but it’s clear that he would want to kill Jews anyway. If he hadn’t been aware of the idea of eugenics, he might have justified the holocaust by saying that the Jews deserved to die because they were ruining the economy or something.

That said, I’m glad that the Created Rationalist has enough critical thinking capabilities to see through most of Stein’s lies. Give it some time, and you’ll have both feet in the world of reason.

Surprise, surprise… look who’s supporting the Florida “academic freedom” bill.

Image source: NPR

Oh, I’m not just linking to NPR for the image. There’s also an article, and some sound clips to listen to of people saying that they’re trying to teach children critical thinking in science. If that’s truly what they were trying to do, that would be all well and good but… Why are they singling out evolution?

You can help raise Mark Mathis’ blood pressure! All you need is access to the Internet, and some links which I’m about to provide.

First, there’s a poll on MySpace. If enough people go there and vote “No” on the question “Should Intelligent Design be taught in schools?” PZ Myers says you can raise his blood pressure a few points.

Next, I’ve noticed that Google keeps track of online reviews of Expelled. Currently, there are 13 positive reviews, 4 neutral reviews, and 8 negative reviews. I’d like to have faith in the proportion of people with brains who’ve seen the film being a little larger than that, so, if you were masochistic enough to sit yourself through that tedious movie, go here to write a review and hopefully we can increase the number of negative reviews just a tad.

Don’t let the small army of cdesign proponetsists that Mathis has raised continue to twist the truth. They can actively support that stupidity propaganda, but we can put the truth out there, eh.

Kudos to you, oh Florida.

“This is a freedom of speech issue.”

That was sarcasm, in case you haven’t already guessed by the content of the link. What I really think we should do is reject the Confederacy’s surrender and eject them from the Union so that the Bible Belt can go off, have their own constitution, and stop embarrassing us. They may have Disney World, we still have Disney Land.

What I’d like to say to the Florida lawmakers is this… why single out teachers who don’t believe in evolution for protection? Surely there’s other forms of scientific orthodoxy out there that must be questioned…

Heliocentricism (sun-centered model of the Solar System) is virtually unquestioned for some reason. Perhaps the Big Science conspiracy has a hold over the geocentricists too?

And why limit it to scientific orthodoxy? What about historical orthodoxy? Maybe the holocaust really was just a zionist plot!

Oops. You just pissed off the Jewish lobby. But for now, you’ve only pissed off the non-existent Atheist lobby. No worries, eh?

As for freedom of speech, while you’re at it, why not pass a bill that lets teachers teach their religious and political views as well. Considering the fact that most teachers are Liberals, I’m sure the religious right behind this wont mind in the slightest…

I do believe that I am now desperately in love with the NCSE. They’ve now produced several splendid videos exposing cdesign proponentists.

Creationism disproved?

Teaching Creationism in Schools

Jesus in my School

And of course, there’s still the lovely Expelled Exposed website.

It seems that if your news organization isn’t affiliated with a baptist church or a pro-ID organization, you have enough intelligence to see through Ben Stein. From MSNBC:

Rarely has a movie subtitle so capably assessed a movie’s content as does “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.”

Actually, I’d dispute that. “What the Bleep Do We Know?” really did make me wonder how ignorant you have to be to think that thoughts change the atomic structure of water.

From Canada.com:

The result of poor reviews and mediocre box office, I expect, is that Expelled will not succeed in changing American laws and forcing schools to teach Intelligent Design as well. The exercise — whipping up public opinion, holding restricted screenings, selling the movie to a targeted audience — is of more interest as a marketing campaign than as a debate between science and religion.

I agree with the latter part, but when you have people utterly convinced that evolution=Nazism, they will try to actively get rid of evolution.

And of course, they have gotten good reviews from church organizations, the Discovery Institution, and… Yahoo! “News”. Don’t worry, Yahoo! I’d already lost whatever respect I had for whatever credibility the news you churned out was when you reported that Destination Truth (a Sci-Fi channel (un)reality show) had found Yeti footprints.

Anyway, overall it’s good news for the good guys.