Man, in his ignorance, supposed that all phenomena were produced by some intelligent powers, and with direct reference to him. – Gods, Ingersoll

Hot on the heels of a rather intriguing discussion (see here), I think it time we dust off some of the more obvious blatherings of the religious.

It’s a flawed ‘creation’. Witness:

1. The human eye: who on earth would construct something that actually sees everything upside down? Or for that matter, why are all our mechanisms up front, and vulnerable? If we’re to measure ‘design’, why are squids eyes better designed than ours?
2. Click here for an interesting take – Neil DeGrasse Tyson on Youtube describing Stupid Design.
3. And here are my observations (from 2006) on the various pitfalls and razorwire of this world, allegedly ‘created’ for us.
4. ‘Irreducible complexity‘ – that hoary old chestnut, has reached its expiration date (long since overdue: there are some minds suffering from ingestion of this meme that never made the big time). Again, here’s another take of mine on this…less than overwhelming effort. (Sorry for all the links back to my site, but rather than repeat myself at length, it’s simpler to outline past efforts.)
5. Or, as another exhibit, the bunny rabbit. Yes, you heard me right. The bunny eats its food, digests it, evacuates it, and…eats the pellets. It has to consume its own excrement in order to survive. How efficient is that? Not very.
6. And it’s not enough that we die. Oh, no. Creeping decrepitude seeps into us. Maintenance devolves, from a simple shrug in youth to battling for survival in old age.

One has not far to go, to find the flaws in this ‘creation’ – they’re everywhere. For every single example of some wonderful innovation, there’s at the very least a hundred examples of how inefficient organisms and/or mechanism manage to work around glitches.

So please, all you Young Earth/Old Earth creationists: don’t blither on about how ‘all creation is a testament to His Wonder’, because that dog don’t hunt. It’s blaringly obvious to those of us who realize that we are most emphatically not the center of this universe, that it cares not one jot nor tittle whether we live or die. To claim otherwise, is self-absorption to the point of narcissism.

Better yet, to quote one of my favorite shows, Heroes, “Evolution is a blind, messy, violent process.”

Yes it is. It is not only the dominant paradigm, it is simply fact. To claim otherwise is hubris, pure and simple.

Till the next post, then.

(Cross posted at The Uncredible Hallq)

I’ve found out via Prosblogion that there’s a philosophy of religion conference happening this weekend, and the papers are posted online. The first one that caught my eye was “Is Atheism Reasonable?” by Ted Poston, and well… um… let me start by just outlining the paper.

The paper could be divided up into two sections, one on “sympathetic atheism” and another on “unsympathetic atheism.” Sympathetic atheism is defined as follows:

(i) the concept of God is coherent, (ii) there‟s no God because there‟s gratuitous evil, and (iii) were there a God the world might not be all that different than it actually is.

Unsympathetic atheism is more vaguely described as involving a rejection of (iii). Sympathetic atheism is alleged to be incoherent, while unsympathetic atheism is alleged to have been refuted by Plantinga.

There is something puzzling about the section on sympathetic atheism: it’s treated as something worth discussing, even though there’s no evidence anyone’s actually held it as defined. There’s a citation of William L. Rowe’s advocacy of “friendly atheism,” but Rowe characterized his position in terms of thinking religious belief isn’t always irrational, and it was a somewhat weak thesis given that he was thinking along the lines of people who aren’t aware of the reasons for atheism, or aren’t aware of the problems with the reasons for their religious beliefs (I read Rowe’s essay over winter break, and again in preparation for writing this post). Poston obviously thinks there’s some connection between the two, but the actual arguments for this point are very sketchy. He may well be right about “sympathetic atheism” as he defines it, but that doesn’t mean he’s refuted a position which anyone’s actually held.

With “unsympathetic atheism,” the careless shift from the stated definition and thinking in terms of rationality is particularly pronounced. The suggestion is that if the atheist claims to have strong justification for thinking they’ve gotten something right that believers get wrong, they have to think believers are irrational. Might they establish this by appeal to the arguments for atheism. No. Why? Because Alvin Plantinga has shown otherwise.

The claim that “for any proposition P, if S has shown that P, where S is Alvin Plantinga, then P is true” is certainly widely held in philosophy of religion. But what arguments are there for it? Of course, “show” here might take an analysis paralleling popular analyses of “know,” in that the truth of the claim is supposed to be an integral part of what it means to say it is known (or, perhaps, shown). This, though, only shifts the issue to how one can so effortlessly gain justification for thinking Plantinga has shown something. On the proposed reading of the word “show,” one has to conclude that many philosophers of religion hold to something along the following lines: the fact that Plantinga has argued something, and one can find the appropriate citation, this constitutes at least strong evidence that Plantinga has shown the thing. Yet I don’t know of any arguments for this position either. If anyone could point me to a relevant journal article, it would be much appreciated.

*Sigh* The one upshot of all the bad philosophy papers out there is that if I become a professional philosopher and am feeling tempted to advance my tenure case by publishing a paper with dubious claims, I resist the urge by going out and finding some really lousy papers, write critiques, and publish those critiques in place of the dubious paper I was tempted to submit. Then I can sleep easy at night knowing even if I really have no idea what’s going on with that philosophical issue, I have reason to be confident I was right to say that the particular approaches critiqued don’t work.

Well, at least sort of…

State Court Recognizes Gay Marriages From Elsewhere

A New York appellate court ruled Friday that valid out-of-state marriages of same-sex couples must be legally recognized in New York, just as the law recognizes those of heterosexual couples solemnized elsewhere. Lawyers for both sides said the ruling applied to all public and private employers in the state. Even though gay couples may not legally marry in New York, the appellate court in Rochester held that a gay couple’s 2004 marriage in Canada must be respected under the state’s longstanding “marriage recognition rule,” and that an employer’s denial of health benefits had discriminated against the couple on the basis of their sexual orientation. “The Legislature may decide to prohibit the recognition of same-sex marriages solemnized abroad,” a five-judge panel of the Appellate Division of State Supreme Court ruled unanimously in rejecting a 2006 lower court decision. “Until it does so, however, such marriages are entitled to recognition in New York.” For more than a century, the court noted, New York State has recognized valid out-of-state marriages. Moreover, it said that the Court of Appeals, the state’s highest judicial body, has said the Legislature may enact laws recognizing same-sex marriages. “In our view, the Court of Appeals thereby indicated that the recognition of plaintiff’s marriage is not against the public policy of New York,” the court held.

Even though New York State recently shot down gay marriages, at least they’ll recognize gay marriages from elsewhere — which is, like, good if you need something important, like, you know, health care…

Came across these cool billboards while surfing…

Turns out the one from Jersey actually made the paper, which, I guess is pretty cool — although I doubt the other xian ones needed coverage.

Also turns out it didn’t stay up there that long — but hey, one step at a time, folks…

Now this one is around Columbus, Ohio:

A 14×48-foot “stained glass” billboard bearing the message, “Imagine No Religion,” is going up Saturday morning, February 2, for the month of February on the southeast corner of East Broad St. and Lancaster Ave, Reynoldsburg (suburban Columbus). The Foundation, the nation’s largest membership association for freethinkers (atheists and agnostics), is using a national billboard campaign to take its irreverent message state-by-state to what it calls the “unmassed masses.” The billboard also carries the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s name and its website, ffrf.org. “Our goal is to place a freethinking billboard somewhere in every state,” says Annie Laurie Gaylor, Foundation co-president.

Another funny video about all this shit can be found here, from Greta Christina’s Blog.

I have to get around to putting Greta in our “Other Atheist Blogs” section. One incredibly cool atheist chick.

(If intellectual freethought isn’t a turn-on, then I don’t know what is…)

I don’t normally make a habit of commenting on fundie blogs, but like I said in a comment thread at an earlier post, beaj (The Atheist Jew) lured me over to Apparently So (which should have been this month’s Lion Feed.) Here is Craig H’s Seven Arguments for Intelligent Design. Craig and his fundie friends provide an excellent example of how to use the god of the gaps. When they don’t know something, or can’t explain something, they simply say “God did it”.

I am posting this here because Craig doesn’t allow open comments and you must have a Blogger account to comment over there. So, I will leave this here for you to pick over.

Craig writes:

1. The Big Bang has been proven by astronomers. The five proofs spell the word SURGE: S – The Second Law of Thermodynamics proves energy had to have a beginning because there is not an infinite supply. U – The universe is expanding. If so, it had to begin somewhere (and at some point in time). R – Radiation from the Big Bang itself can be observed. This was discovered in 1965. G – Great galaxy seeds. Think of ripples on a pond, radiating out from a stone’s splash. Scientists can measure this in our universe. E – Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity. Einstein proved that time, space and matter are co-relative. In other words, you can’t have one without the others. From this, the mathematical equation shows a beginning point. The Big Bang proves God exists because the universe had to have a cause. God is that cause. God, on the other hand, is uncaused. (He is outside the time, matter and space of the universe.) That is difficult to grasp, but it means God is eternal. Our choices are either an uncaused universe (which is impossible), or an uncaused creator outside of it. (Which is difficult to understand, but not an impossibility.) God spoke the cosmos into existence and we call that the Big Bang.

2. There are fossils that demonstrate transitional features, but there is not one undisputed fossil in the record that proves macro-evolution. There should be thousands if Darwinian Evolution is true and Darwin himself said so.

3. A mouse trap will not work if you take any of its parts away. Cells function the same way. Someone took a mouse trap and modified it to work without one of its parts to prove this wrong, but it only worked because of intelligent intervention, which is exactly what I believe in the first place. The point here is that lesser parts could not have joined together to form cells. Therefore, cells were designed.

4. Darwin knew nothing of the DNA code when he wrote his theory. We now know that every one of the trillion cells in our bodies has a DNA strand containing a code more complex than an encyclopedia. Never has a complex computer code ever written itself. Only intelligence can write complex code. To me, this is an open and shut case for an intelligent designer.

5. Darwinian Evolutionists basically believe lightning struck the mud and made life. Scientist tried to duplicate this empirically in a lab, but they had to manipulate the atmosphere to the point that life could have never begun to get any results. You don’t hear much about this anymore. Now, some actually say aliens must have brought life here, because they simply have no natural explanation for how life began.

6. Life is so incredibly diverse and complex, the only logical explanation is a remarkable creator. The fine-tuning of the cosmos, the symbiotic relationship of all living things – it boggles the mind to think it is all a freak of nature, or even that natural selection caused it all.

7. Only humans can write songs, books, blogs, stories, and fairy tales. Some monkeys and elephants can express themselves in art, but it pales next to my ability to write this column. Only humans can express their questions about the meaning of life. Only humans can invent complex machinery and technology. Our self-awareness cannot be explained by natural selection or any other natural cause. Clearly, we were created and designed to seek our maker.

So, which designer? Because of the evidences for the resurrection of Jesus, the God of the Bible is the clear choice. We can have a faith that is supported by the evidence, not only of the scripture, but also the world around us.

Some really good sober advice found on GoogleGroups (h/t to Pharyngula).

The first five totally rock — and the next eight are kinda funny, given those first five…

Christians: Tips To Doing Battle With Evil Atheists

Some things to keep in mind:

1. Remember that they are people, just like you are. Contrary to what you may have been led to believe, they are not some lower life form we share this planet with.

2. More than likely, they are smarter than you are. This can be difficult to come to grips with, but it does appear to be true and is a claim that is actually supported by the Bible (1 Corinthians 1:18-31)

3. Statistically, they are also as moral, if not more so than you are. While it is a good thing that they generally are highly moral, it is a shame that we, who often times claim the moral high ground, seem unable, or unwilling, to match our words with our lives.

4. They will probably thump you in debate. They are much more likely to have carefully thought through their position and understand why they believe what they do. We are more likely simply to present some argument that the person we heard it from guaranteed would destroy the enemy. The problem with that is that many of them have heard the same arguments many times and are easily able to counter them.

5. Don’t under-estimate their knowledge of the Bible. Many of them are more familiar with the Bible than the average Christian is. And they know all of the passages that will cause you a problem, and will not hesitate to challenge you with them.

As I say, the next eight seem very weird given all this. But I’ll leave that to our (loyal) readers to decide…

(Cross posted at The Uncredible Hallq)

I recently found out that a certain Dangerous Cult has been Google bombed:

…Yet the church has appeared powerless to stop the online sabotage. Guerrilla action has so far included the temporary disabling of its international website and “Google bombing”, a manipulation of the search engine which has resulted in the website being the first result returned by Google when users type “dangerous cult”. [The dangerous cult]’s UK website has been unavailable and in the US the FBI were investigating what they said was the hoax dispatch of white powder in envelopes to 19 churches in the Los Angeles area….

The linked article also mentions that Facebook groups have been set up to mock the dangerous cult, and protests are being planned to fight the dangerous cult.

All of this, of course, comes on the heels of a video featuring a prominent member of the dangerous cult, a video which the dangerous cult tried to supress.

So if you’re in college, join the Facebook group. If you have a blog, keep the Google bomb going. Oh, and one little thing: I notice the Facebook group is loath to link to material the dangerous cult is trying to keep secret with copyright laws. That is not a winning policy. To start a trend against it, I will start off by dropping a link to Xenu.net, the leading clearing house for information on the dangerous cult that is Scientology. Contribute what you will in the comments.

That old whore Christianity has mated many times, sometimes dropping from its womb madmen and monsters, other times, squalid lonely little sports that briefly squall, and pass away quietly into sewers of history.

This then, is the story of one of those sports. A bastard grandchild, to stretch the simile.  

I picked up the DVD, because for ten bucks, it was cheap laugh. Here’s the clip on Youtube. Here’s their actual website.

For a little back story, the Wiki entry reads thusly:

NESARA is an acronym for the National Economic Stabilization and Recovery Act, a set of economic reforms proposed during the 1990s by Dr. Harvey Barnard. Barnard claimed that the proposals, which included replacing the income tax with a national sales tax, abolishing compound interest on secured loans, and returning to a bimetallic currency, would result in 0% inflation and a more stable economy. The proposals were never introduced before congress, and the only congressman known to have commented on the bill is Ron Paul, dismissively, and through a spokesman.^[1] NESARA has since become better known as the subject of a conspiracy theory promoted by Shaini Goodwin, who claims that the act was passed with additional provisions as the National Economic Security and Reformation Act, and then suppressed by George W. Bush administration and the Supreme Court. Other people have adopted and embellished Goodwin’s ideas.

The following gives us ample reason to distrust someone based on their educational background:

Dr. Harvey Barnard, a Louisiana graduate in systems philosophy, and an engineering consultant and teacher, created the NESARA proposal during the late 1980s and early 1990s. He printed 1000 copies of his proposal in 1996 and sent copies to members of Congress, believing it would pass quickly on its merits. Based on a theory that debt is the number one economic factor inhibiting the growth of the economy, and compound interest the number one “moral evil” and reason for debt, Barnard made several other attempts during the 1990s to draw political attention to the problems that face our economy, and his resulting economic recovery proposal based on the root causes he determined. After these did not succeed, he decided in 2000 to release the proposal to the public domain and publish it on the internet. Barnard also established the NESARA Institute in 2001.

Wiping all debt out in a single act of Congress? Yeah, I’ll bet that wouldn’t mess up the economy, no sirree!

The idea of forgiving any and all debt got latched on to, and with a singular vengeance. Hand in hand it went, with some whackinoid with an axe to grind, and too many missing brain cells:

Soon after Barnard released NESARA on the internet, a user known as “Dove of Oneness” began posting about it in internet forums. “Dove of Oneness” has since been identified as Shaini Goodwin, a former student of The Ramtha School Of Enlightenment. According to Goodwin’s web site, the NESARA bill languished in Congress before finally being passed by a secret session in March 2000 and signed by President Bill Clinton. It was to be announced in 2001, but the Supreme Court issued a gag order that prohibited any official or private source from discussing it, under penalty of death. Goodwin refers to “White Knights,” most of them high-ranking military officials, who have since been struggling to have the law implemented despite opposition by President George W. Bush. Goodwin believes that Bush orchestrated the September 11, 2001 attacks and the Iraq War as distractions from NESARA. Goodwin’s description of NESARA goes beyond Barnard’s proposal by canceling all personal debts, abolishing the Internal Revenue Service, declaring world peace, and requiring new presidential and congressional elections. Goodwin often claims that Bush officials are attempting to hack into and bring down her web site to prevent her from publicizing the law.

The film in question, an Indieflix production, has the crew following the NESARA folks around. Ordinary, ‘down home folks’, you’d think, passing them in the streets. That is, until you watch Goodwin hold these meetings (in a KFC restaurant at first, then moving it around a bit, complaining about the weird looks they received at certain places. Ya think?)

A bunch of strange ex-Mormons (apparently the majority have no access to modern dental facilities – most of them had black, rotted teeth) talking about ‘White Nights’, St. Germaine coming down from the heavens with an armada of UFOs to pre-empt the Iraqi war. Yeah, I kid you not in the least, dear reader: one clip in the film has Goodwin explaining how the armada would teleport all the US troops into their spaceships (sans equipment) to keep the US out of Iraq! Another clip, Goodwin blathers on about how people who have more reptilian DNA will be more easily influenced by the ‘darkness’, and cites the reptilian hindbrain as his proof. A claim is made that there was indeed a ‘hybrid‘ that attended one of their meetings (alas, said chimera was not present for the filming. What a shock!).

These predictions were made sometime in 2002. Did they come true? Obviously not. Further clips from the film illustrate Goodwin trying to explain just exactly why the ‘prophecies’ didn’t come true – there was a liberal mix-’n-matching from cultural referents (the bible, the Prime Directive from Star Trek, I kid you not!), some dithering about with ‘free will’, and more or less, a complete disconnect from reality.

To his credit, Barnard completely disassociated himself from the movement, continuing on with the original Wiki entry:

Barnard became aware of Goodwin’s description of NESARA before his death in 2005. He denied that NESARA had been enacted into law or even assigned a tracking number, and condemned Goodwin’s allegations as a disinformation campaign. Goodwin, for his part, dismisses the NESARA Institute as a disinformation front for the Bush family.

Goodwin apparently is still bilking his followers:

Some NESARA detractors claim that NESARA is a cult designed primarily to provide an income to Goodwin and others. They point to the fact that Goodwin, Lee, and Nidle frequently ask their readers to donate money. Goodwin, who also asks readers to donate their frequent flyer miles,claims that she needs and has used the funds to travel to various locations around the world to secretly meet with high-level government officials about getting NESARA announced.

Some NESARA supporters also make the claim that otherworldly beings are working to get NESARA announced. These include a “channeled spirit” called “Hatonn”, and another called “Sananda” (claiming to be Jesus) along with Saint Germain, a deity borrowed from The I AM Movement and the Church Universal and Triumphant. Benevolent aliens are also frequently mentioned, most prominently by Nidle, as working towards the NESARA announcement. The designation of George W. Bush as a reptilian often co-occurs with this claim. Goodwin has claimed that Saint Germain has come down from heaven to physically meet with heads of banks and world leaders regarding the NESARA announcement.

The prominence of failed prophecy also lends support to the cult theory. NESARA supporters often tell their readers that the NESARA announcement is going to happen in a matter of days. These claims have been made too many times to enumerate, without ever coming to fruition. According to the documentary Waiting For NESARA, the claim was also made prior to March 2003 that George Bush was planning the war with Iraq only to further delay the NESARA announcement. It was prophesied that spiritual beings and UFOs would intervene with Bush’s plans and prevent the war.

A June 2006 complaint to the Washington consumer protection division accused Goodwin of using the NESARA story to defraud a 64-year-old San Francisco woman of at least $10,000. The woman’s daughter said the actual amount is much larger, in the hundreds of thousands.

In closing, it is a hard, hard thing, to be outcast, to be pariah. But to be tossed out of a weird cult (because let’s face it, folks, they’re all weird little cults, whether it be Christianity, LDS, Islam, etc) because you’re too bugfuck crazy for the irrational majority you are a part of (or maybe it’s just the lack of dental hygiene; who knows?) – well, it has to be somewhat unsettling, especially for the feeble-minded. So you modernize your craziness. Throw in some science-fiction fodder, a sprinkle of this baroque meritocracy, a smattering of that psychotropic belief-system, heavy doses of some stupid ‘holy book’, and voila! You gots yourself some damn fine messianic stew (that is, if all your tastebuds are solely in your mouth).

Shaking my head, I take your leave now. I love humanity, but aye, caramba! What a ridiculous species we is.

Till the next post, then.