God, guns and Adam — a conservative #fail

Think Progress image

Tom DeLay thinks god wrote the U.S. Constitution.

David French thinks people have not just a constitutional, but a god-given, right to guns.

The simple and totally wrong wingnut logical conclusion should then should be:

Why didn't the Intelligent Designer god create Adam with gun in hand?

And, that's why you'll never see logic and modern American conservativism in the same room.

This is all just part of larger intellectual failings by the American religious right, of course. When you claim that god did "item X," especially when you usually relate it to some idea that's part and parcel of your American exceptionalism, hilarity and idiocy usually follow after some simple logical reasoning. It's not always quite as quick of a slam dunk as with this or with one of the three Weird Sisters of Sarah Palin, Pam Gellar and Michele Bachmann, but ... sometimes it is! 

Update: It's worse than I thought! The Kentucky Baptist Convention is giving away guns.

#GnuAtheists and theistic evolution — again

Apparently, this the latest broadside in an old issue, namely in the Gnu Atheist versus "accommodationist" world — how closely to work with people of faith who believe in theistic evolution.

Or, as Vic Stenger calls it now, "intelligent design creationism."

He's clearly meaning to be pejorative, with this:

Virtually all Christians who accept that species evolve, contrary to the Bible that they believe is the word of God, think evolution is God-guided. This is not Darwinian evolution. God-guided evolution is intelligent design creationism. How many American Christians believe in evolution, as it is understood by science? The data indicate none.

The emphasis is Stenger's, not mine.

And, I've had issues with his thought processes in the past, including claims that he has disproven the existence of god. (Per standard traditional logic, claiming to prove the non-existence of anything is like dividing by zero.)

Back to the point at hand.

First, on public policy and related issues.

As folks like Eugenie Scott and the other folks at the National Center for Science Education know, we need these folks, imperfect as their understanding, or acceptance, of neo-Darwinian theory may be, to work hand in hand with secularists in battling folks like the State Board of Education here in Texas.

Let's not also forget, to be scientifically correct, that evolution is, properly speaking, evolution from one life form to another. It is not the same as abiogenesis, though Darwin's "warm little pond" comment touched on the latter.

And, per one commenter on the Facebook post where I saw the Stenger link, Darwin postulated the fact of evolution, but his theory of natural selection as a theory of the mechanism. It's been refined plenty since then. Lynn Margulis' symbiosis, and now, ideas from epigenetics, are further refining it, or more than just refining, reworking it.

These are all naturalistic, scientific issues, not metaphysical ones, tis true.

However, a divinity who is "less than all" and naturalistically present could yet be powerful enough to intervene in the process of evolution.

So, unless Gnu Atheists want to eventually produce a book essay collection called "How to Lose Friends and Influence People the Wrong Way," they should rethink their public relations strategy.

That said, with a movement that consistently finds a mix of brand-new ways and revamped old ways to shoot itself in the foot, I'm holding my breath over this change about as much as I am Obama stopping being a neoliberal and actually delivering on any true liberal promises in his State of the Union address. 

Abortion: It happens in the animal world too

And, "deliberately," to the degree you can attribute will to the pipefish, a relative of the sea horse. And, not for deformations, but purely for attractiveness reasons.

The researchers showed that a male pipefish will absorb some of his developing offspring — effectively eating some of his unborn young. This highlights a conflict of interest between the two sexes: the females surrender their eggs to the males in the hope that they will all be supported, but the males instead may support only a fraction of the brood. ...

The fact that male pipefish are selectively judging the fitness of their mate both before and after copulation is surprising because, in general, most animals judge the quality of their mates before sex or, in some species, after sex.

Verrrry interesting. Read the full article.

That said, per someone asking me on Facebook about the "tarted-up" headline, let me provide a lot more backstory to the issue.

Really, the headline isn't "tarted up."

First, as for the facts, and their relevance to humans? Much more often than most people know, and many might like to admit, a woman will, in the same way, absorb a fetus early in pregnancy. Or in the case of twins, especially identical ones, one fetus will actually absorb the other. This is how people can have multiple blood types and such. The technical term for the "absorbed fetus" in the adult survivor is a "teratoma." Fof a non-Wiki, real-world description of a teratoma, go here.

That said, in a more narrow scientific point of view, I believe "abortion," not miscarriage is the correct term.

And, using abortion but excluding "reabsorption," in humans, 25-35 percent of pregnancies are spontaneously aborted, usually 6-8 weeks in.

Reproduction is a lot more fallible of a process than many people know. Or might like to accept, if they did know.

Is it callous to use the word "abortion" in the header when "redistributing" this information to a general audience? That's not my intent, I can say that, at least. Is it meant to be "shocking" in the sense of "eye opening"? Yes.

It's meant to get people to realize that reproductive "oddities" and "fallibilities" are relatively "normal" throughout the animal world, just as homosexuality is. And that, then, for some people who don't want to look at that, ties directly to claims of "intelligent design."

For more on this issue, namely teratomas and other reproductive fallibilities vs. intelligent design, go here.

That said, on the issue of abortion myself, I am not at the left-hand edge of abortion rights. I believe the trimester system should be junked for a bimester one, with Medicaid funding required in the first bimester, but states' rights to regulate abortion as open in the second bimester as they are now in the third trimester, or maybe even a bit more so.

God – the No. 1 abortionist (if he exists)

In light of yesterday’s murder of Dr. George Tiller, this is an edited repost of an old post.

Francisco Ayala, one of the world’s greatest evolutionary biologists, AND one of the most renowned biological scientists being a professed Christian, as part of openly defending the compatibility of evolution and religious belief, has been a busy man with the controversy over “Expelled.”

And, he’s not afraid to be as blunt with IDers as Richard Dawkins:

In fact, he said, evolution “is more consistent with belief in a personal god than intelligent design. If God has designed organisms, he has a lot to account for.”

Consider, he said, that at least 20 percent of pregnancies are known to end in spontaneous abortion. If that results from divinely inspired anatomy, Dr. Ayala said, “God is the greatest abortionist of them all.”

Ayala talks more about the compatibility, that he sees, of religion and science, his latest book, “Darwin’s Gift to Science and Religion.”

Ayala also offers his take on the “teach the controversy,” or similar statements, espoused by many evolution doubters from President Bush on down, as well as evolution denialists:

He dismisses the argument that it is only fair to teach both sides of the evolution/creationism controversy. “We don’t teach alchemy along with chemistry,” he said. “We don’t teach witchcraft along with medicine. We don’t teach astrology with astronomy.”

Ayala’s work on behalf of evolutionary biology is greatly appreciated.

(Oh, if you refuse to believe he’s a practicing Christian, read here.)

But, his comments also underscore part of why I became an atheist.

If you accept the idea that God, in the Western monotheistic version, cannot be “all,” how much of a “less than all” do you accept and still find worthy of the label “God,” as far as powers or skills of design?

Or, second question – how much below “less than all” do you get until you recognize that your “God” is nothing but a “god of the gaps” and that these gaps have been being closed by both science and philosophy for 300 years or more?

Or transferring this issue beyond what philosophers call “natural evil” to “moral evil,” how much “inhumanity” (the older Mark Twain would say it’s quite human) do you accept as the production, whether active or passive, of a “morally less than all” divinity before junking the idea entirely?

And, that said, at the end of the NYT story, Ayala himself refuses to discuss whether he is still a religious believer or not.

Addendum: Issues like teratomas and the related human chimeras add to this issue.

Update, May 2, 2021: Fascinating Smithsonian piece here. If you're familiar with what chimeras are, namely a human fetus that has absorbed another in the womb, the discovery that moms can become chimeras from their fetuses is ... fascinating.

The creationist brand – literally – for eighth graders in public school

An Ohio public school teacher and classroom creationist indoctrinator stands accused of branding crosses on students’ arms as well as openly displaying a Bible in the classroom. One family is suing both John Freshwater and his school district, Mount Vernon.

Eighth-graders who were taught by John Freshwater frequently had to be re-taught in high school what they were supposed to have learned in Freshwater’s class, according to outside investigators hired by the district.

Given that the school district had ordered Freshwater to remove the Bible from his desk once, and he didn’t, then got a second order, and ditto with his teaching of creationism and intelligent design, I hope the district, as well as Freshwater, gets its ass sued off. I also hope the suit gets expanded to name Freshwater’s principal and superintendent, and the Mount Vernon School Board trustees, all individually by name, in the lawsuit. That will help stop crap like this:

Today, the family’s attorney, Jessica Philemond, said it was unfortunate that the school district didn’t do anything sooner to stop Freshwater.

“These concerns had been going on for at least 11 years and the school had not done anything,” she said.

Sue away and expand that suit.

‘Strengths and weaknesses’ next ID and creationism in Texas

And, the latest spinmeistering battleground for how to indoctrinate school students into religion masquerading as science is right here in Texas.

As the story points out, the big question is who gets to define “weaknesses”?

Take, for example, intermediary forms on the evolution from australopithecines to homo sapiens, or “missing links.”

Any time a new intermediary form is discovered, creationists/IDers/strength-and-weakness types claim, “that means you now have two missing links.” (You have to fill in each and every “gap” after all.)

And, with ardent IDers having seven of 15 votes on the State Board of Education, the battle is getting tense.

That begins with the lies, self-delusions or both of the chairman of the SBOE, Dr. Don McLeroy:

McLeroy believes that Earth’s appearance is a recent geologic event — thousands of years old, not 4.5 billion. “I believe a lot of incredible things,” he said, “The most incredible thing I believe is the Christmas story. That little baby born in the manger was the god that created the universe.”

But Dr. McLeroy says his rejection of evolution — “I just don’t think it’s true or it’s ever happened” — is not based on religious grounds. Courts have clearly ruled that teachings of faith are not allowed in a science classroom, but when he considers the case for evolution, Dr. McLeroy said, “it’s just not there.”

Well, to riff the famous science line, “you’re so incorrect you’re not even wrong.”

So, too is the Strengths and Weaknesses website.

Does God have car problems?

Maybe the Intelligent Designer hasn’t mastered fuel-injected engines?

Or, instead, do you take your car to “God’s Garage” for faith-based mechanics instead of the real deal?

From a business in Altus, Okla.:



A “laying on of hands” on a camshaft? An anointing with motor oil? Speaking in valve clatter tongues? The possibilities are endless.

Elbow grease makes for healthy skin

The inside of your and my elbow literally supplies the grease, and some of the bacteria whose cells on our bodies outnumber “human” cells by 10-1,
make the healthy skin.

Why would an “intelligent designer” need to go to such length?

You know the answer.

Microbe symbiosis – the latest findings in exobiology

Some microbes “pioneer” cold rocks, creating heat to attract other microbes.

Why is this important?

It’s another anecdotal example of the power of evolutionary biology, another anecdotal example to bring up against intelligent design claims.

No wonder our school kids are science-ignorant

Our teachers aren’t teaching it.

One-quarter of public school science teachers teach either open creationism or stealth creationism, aka intelligent design, in their classrooms. And 50 percent of them, or one-eighth the total …

called creationism a “valid scientific alternative to Darwinian explanations for the origin of species,” and the same number said that “many reputable scientists view these as valid alternatives to Darwinian theory.”

What’s the solution?

The study's authors note that courtroom victories — classroom creationism has consistently been struck down in U.S. courts — is apparently insufficient to guarantee an accurate depiction of evolution. Nor will rigorous state science standards, like those recently passed in Florida, do the trick. Instead they recommend teacher certification requiring the completion of an evolutionary biology course.

I totally, 302,875,106,592,253 percent agree. (That’s 13 to the 13th power; what could be more anti-superstitious than that?)

See here, at PLoS, for full survey of teachers.

The Intelligent Designer at work in Greece (warning – graphic pic alert)

A 9-year-old girl in Athens went to a hospital with stomach pains. Doctors discovered she had an embryonic twin in her stomach:

Andreas Markou, head of the hospital’s pediatric department, said the embryo was a formed fetus with a head, hair and eyes, but no brain or umbilical cord.

Markou said cases where one of a set of twins absorbs the other in the womb occurs in one of 500,000 live births.

The usual questions abound, of course.

Here’s a sampling:

Picture via The Telegraph

• How could an Intelligent Designer botch this? And hundreds of similar births in the U.S. every year?
• Did the embryonic twin have a soul?
• Was this “soul-killing” to remove the embryonic twin? Let alone the 11-year-old Chinese girl’s much-larger embryonic twin pictured at right?
• Could the Grand Poobah of ID be so cruel, in the “problem of evil” crux, to let poor people go 11 years (or all their lives, not too many years before this), before having the option of surgery to remove an embryonic twin like the one shown?
• Would people who aren’t hardcore anti-choicers on reproductive rights soften their stances even more if this were presented as a counter-graphic example of the one-third or so of human conceptions that are “botched” in some way or another?
• Will IDers of an conservative Christian bent trot out “original sin” to try to explain away all of this? (And, yes, like Ken Ham, some Xns actually will attribute the cause of anything wrong in our world to original sin.)

Update, March 18, 2010: Abortion in the animal world provides an additional entree to this issue.

Beyond abortion in the animal world, both partially absorbed "Siamese" twins and an even more radical pregnancy development, a teratoma (when a second fetus is absorbed inside the first totally, and early in development) exist in the animal world, as do "mosaics" — when two fetuses "blend" to an even lower level. In humans, people who have different blood tests report them to have different blood types are an example. These are also often known as chimeras.

Connected is the fact that about one-third of human pregnancies are spontaneously aborted — as noted by a Ph.D. biologist who is also a professed Christian, while still telling fundamentalists that under their worldview, god must be called "The Great Abortionist."

Ayala to IDers – ‘God is the greatest abortionist’

Francisco Ayala, one of the world’s greatest evolutionary biologists, AND one of the most renowned biological scientists openly defending the compatibility of evolution and religious belief, has been a busy man with the controversy over “Expelled.”

And, he’s not afraid to be as blunt with IDers as Richard Dawkins:

In fact, he said, evolution “is more consistent with belief in a personal god than intelligent design. If God has designed organisms, he has a lot to account for.”

Consider, he said, that at least 20 percent of pregnancies are known to end in spontaneous abortion. If that results from divinely inspired anatomy, Dr. Ayala said, “God is the greatest abortionist of them all.”

Or consider, he said, the “sadism” in parasites that live by devouring their hosts, or the mating habits of insects like female midges, tiny flies that fertilize their eggs by consuming their mates’ genitals, along with all their other parts.

For the midges, Dr. Ayala said, “it makes evolutionary sense. If you are a male and you have mated, the best thing you can do for your genes is to be eaten.” But if God or some other intelligent agent made things this way on purpose, he said, “then he is a sadist, he certainly does odd things and he is a lousy engineer.”

That is also the message of his latest book, “Darwin’s Gift to Science and Religion.”

Ayala also offers his take on the “teach the controversy,” or similar statements, espoused by many evolution doubters from President Bush on down, as well as evolution denialists:

He dismisses the argument that it is only fair to teach both sides of the evolution/creationism controversy. “We don’t teach alchemy along with chemistry,” he said. “We don’t teach witchcraft along with medicine. We don’t teach astrology with astronomy.”

Ayala’s work on behalf of evolutionary biology is greatly appreciated.

But, his comments also underscore part of why I became an atheist.

If you accept the idea that God, in the Western monotheistic version, cannot be “all,” how much of a “less than all” do you accept and still find worthy of the label “God,” as far as powers or skills of design?

Or, second question – how much below “less than all” do you get until you recognize that your “God” is nothing but a “god of the gaps” and that these gaps have been being closed by both science and philosophy for 300 years or more?

Or transferring this issue beyond what philosophers call “natural evil” to “moral evil,” how much “inhumanity” (the older Mark Twain would say it’s quite human) do you accept as the production, whether active or passive, of a “morally less than all” divinity before junking the idea entirely?

And, that said, at the end of the NYT story, Ayala himself refuses to discuss whether he is still a religious believer or not.

Addendum: Issues like teratomas and the related human chimeras add to this issue.

Update, May 2, 2021: Fascinating Smithsonian piece here. If you're familiar with what chimeras are, namely a human fetus that has absorbed another in the womb, the discovery that moms can become chimeras from their fetuses is ... fascinating.

‘Expelled’ telling more lies

The latest trick? Rather than boot people like P.Z. Myers, aka Pharyngula, when they show up for screenings of the science-free mock-umentary of non-existent discrimination against creationsts and IDers, the people behind “Expelled” are resorting to a new lie.

This one? “Expelled” PR people claim that screenings of the movie have been canceled, when, instead, they’ve just changed the start times, to try to screen out dirty, sneaky, science-literate evolutionists who are trying to infiltrate the screenings.

It’s enough to make Pharyngula give “Expelled” spokesman Ben Stein a smackdown:



Oh, here is something ludicrously funny: If Stein hadn’t accepted the narrator gig Dennis Miller was reportedly the next option. And, I’ll believe it when I see it that “Expelled” will open on 1,000 screens two weeks from today.
The reason for the canceled screenings lies is that Stein, producer Mark Mathis and others don’t want the science-literate to see the lies inside the theater, on screen. As LiveScience points out, the lies include the fact that the discriminated/hassled people were actually not given tenure, if university professors (and no wonder), had expired contracts as contract faculty, had engaged in improper publishing ethics to sneak non-peer reviewed reports about intelligent design into academic journals and more.

The movie also repeats the old canard that evolution is responsible for Nazism. Not true, as many Nazi officials were clueless about it, and many of those (who pretended to be?) not clueless rejected Darwinism.

As for claims ID (or creationism-lite) should be taught in public schools, Benjamin Radford has the perfect answer:

There's a place for creationism/intelligent design theory in schools. It's in religion and social studies classes, not science courses. If Ben Stein and other creationists are truly concerned about giving fairness and equal time to competing theories, they should be demanding that students be taught that mankind came from a tree, as the Maasai tribe of East Africa believe; that according to Hindus, the gods Vishnu, Shiva, and Brahma created the world and humans; and that the Incans believed that mankind first arose on two small islands on Lake Titicaca in Bolivia. There is just as much evidence for these creation stories (and many others) as for the one told in Genesis.

One refrain is "teach the controversy," but among scientists there is no controversy about whether evolution is true. Evidence of evolution is all around us; for example, flu vaccines need to be reformulated each year because the flu viruses are constantly evolving and adapting to older vaccines.

The only “controversy” is how people who claim to have such steadfast religious beliefs can be such out-and-out liars.

Actually, even that’s not a controversy. Some of the biggest whoppers in the history of mankind have been told in the name of religion.

Pharygula more popular than ‘Expelled’

The creationist screed movie that expelled evolutionary science blogger P.Z. Myers:

• Is trying to, in essence bribe its way into theaters because nobody is showing it;
• can’t get (or buy) a good review to save its life;
• Has a website far less popular than Myers’ blog:



But, with a true-blue honest, Nixon Administration icon like this:



Why would you be worried about reviews? Why would you need to buy your way into theaters?

As for that, it had a preview screening down here in Fort Worth last October, and I heard not a word about it at that time.

Oh, the backstory on producer Mark Mathis’, et al original bait-and-switch from “Crossroads” to “Expelled” is here.

Texas science ed director resigns over ID-creationist pressure

Texas’ state science education commissioner, Chris Comer, has resigned in what she calls a forced resignation over her refusal to turn a blind eye to possible evolution and intelligent design politics and spread.

Comer, who held her position for nine years, said she believes evolution politics were behind her ousting.

“None of the other reasons they gave are, in and of themselves, firing offenses,” she said.

The Texas Education Agency put Comer on 30 days’ paid administrative leave in late October, resulting in what she described as a forced resignation.

The move came shortly after Comer forwarded an e-mail announcing a presentation being given by the author of “Inside Creationism's Trojan Horse.” In the book, author Barbara Forrest says creationist politics are behind the movement to get intelligent design theory taught in public schools. Ms. Comer sent the e-mail to several individuals and a few online communities.

Here’s TEA’s spin:

Comer's e-mail implies endorsement of the speaker and implies that TEA endorses the speaker's position on a subject on which the agency must remain neutral," the officials said.

The officials said that forwarding the e-mail conflicted with Ms. Comer's job responsibilities. The e-mail also violated a directive for her not to communicate with anyone outside the agency regarding the upcoming science curriculum review, officials said in the documents.

The documents show that Lizzette Reynolds, the agency's senior adviser on statewide initiatives, started the push to fire Ms. Comer over the e-mail.

"This is something that the State Board, the Governor's Office and members of the Legislature would be extremely upset to see because it assumes this is a subject that the agency supports," Ms. Reynolds said in an e-mail to Ms. Comer's supervisors.

Ms. Reynolds joined the agency in January and previously worked in the U.S. Department of Education and as a deputy legislative director during President Bush's term as governor.

Note that neither TEA officials nor Reynolds claims to have an e-mail showing Comer officially endorsed Forrest’s book. The idea that it implies endorsement of the speaker may be true in the real world, but the TEA knows it’s not legally provable.

But, that’s small potatoes.

Why WOULDN’T Comer endorse Forrest’s book indeed?

For the TEA and Reynolds to say something is wrong with that leads to the inference they see nothing wrong with creationists trying to foist intelligent design — as already rejected by federal court in Dover, Pa. — as perfectly acceptable.

And, it’s pretty clear that is exactly what they believe.

Creationist/intelligent designer deception

Getting recognized mainstream scientists like Richard Dawkins to appear in a movie which was only later revealed to be an intelligent design effort certainly fits the bill on deception.

Now Dawkins is British, and shouldn’t be expected to be fully cognizant of American politics and political culture. But, as soon as I read in the story that Ben Stein extended him the invitation, I smelled a rat.

If IDers/creationists can’t make a film without a lie about it’s nature as the starting premise, that says more than enough right there, doesn’t it?

Think Intelligent Design’s ‘war’ on evolutionary science is wholly innocuous? Think again

Death threats against university science professors are not innocuous.

It’s despicable that at least one IDer, probably mentally supported by others, believes that since you can’t win this as an intellectual or legal battle, it’s time to actually make it a physical battle.

I vacation the National Parks, BushCo wants to weaken them

I go on vacation to, among other places, Grand Teton, Yellowstone and Glacier national parks, and I see BushCo shenanigans have been sneaking around for some of those very parks.

According to the New York Times:

A high-ranking appointee at the Interior Department proposed fundamentally changing the way national parks are managed, putting more emphasis on recreational use and loosening protections against overuse, noise and damage to the air, water, wildlife or scenery. But a group of senior National Park Service employees rejected the proposal at a meeting this month.
The 194 pages of revisions to the park service's basic policy document suggested by Paul Hoffman, a deputy assistant secretary of the department, could have opened up new opportunities for off-road use of snowmobiles and all-terrain vehicles throughout the park system, including Yellowstone National Park, whose roads the Interior Department has kept open to snowmobiles.

It’s things like this which have me maintain my membership in the Sierra Club, the National Resources Defense Council and Earthjustice, formerly the Sierra Club’s legal arm. (See links on the right-hand rail.)

As if that weren’t bad enough, the antiscientific monstrosity called intelligent design reared its ugly head in Hoffman’s paper.

And in its discussion of park service system resources and educational programs, it would have eliminated virtually every reference to the theory of evolution.

In addition, Hoffman urged rejecting ideas of understanding parks in their larger environments, such as the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, and curtailing parks’ power to control events outside their boundaries.

For instance, it would have been more difficult for park officials to call for the Environmental Protection Agency's aid in reducing haze and air pollution in parks.

Can anyone say, “Let’s make the Great Smoky Mountains a little smokier?”