Answers to a Creationist's Questions

John Willis responded to my posts on Ray Comfort's Soap Box Blog, in one of Ray's many botched attempts at writing about science. Ray cut us off when I started posting links to back up my claims, so I continued the discussion here, injecting even more links that I posted on Ray's forum.

John, if you find me here, welcome. I hope to continue the discussion, and possibly get to some of your comments, which raised questions for me. So here goes, from our last exchange...

John Willis wrote:
"If you are going to beat me up, please do it slowly and throughly."

I'm not here to beat you up. I'm here to correct glaring mistakes that you and others have about science, history, and other things that they consider to be "facts", which are objectively in error.

IN other words, I'm trying to help educate what I see as misguided and commonly made mistakes concerning science, atheism, and history.

John Willis said...

DAVE: Do you realize that nothing in nature is random?

"Yes, I do, but that is not the claim of Darwinian evolution. In this respect, your understanding of nature is more in line with my worldview then atheism.

You're incorrect. The modern theory of evolution does not claim that evolution is driven by "chance", is "random", or is "accidental".

John Willis wrote:

David wrote:

"Do you understand that "random events" are not compatible with the scientific law of cause and effect?"

Yes I do. And you are the first atheist I have conversed with on this blog, who does not deny the scientific law of cause and effect.

I haven't met any atheists anywhere who deny cause and effect. Perhaps you haven't been debating very long? Cause and effect are part of the essential backbone of all science. Anyone who denies it, essentially denies science itself.

John Writes:

This is indeed important. You hit the nail right on the head as you write....

"The same is true of all natural events -- all things in the world obey the laws of chemistry and physics, as well as cause and effect. Nothing has ever been known to be random or to not follow these scientific laws."

And as the universe coming into being was the first event, what or whom do you claim caused the universe?

We have insufficient information to determine the cause of the universe, and saying "God did it" does not help to increase our knowledge at all -- it's sort of a scientific cop-out to just say "God Did It" for anything we currently don't understand. We don't know what preceeded the Big Bang. We can only speculate, based on our current knowledge, because we reach "singularity", meaning, our information on the factors and variables for calculating what happened are too incomplete to give accurate results. I am not going to speculate blindly.

John Willis said...

David wrote:

"I don't mince words or make up my own new definitions for words. Using the English Dictionary should be a practice that we all do. I have found that religious groups in particular, love to invent new definitions for words that nobody else uses but them."

Can you give me an example?

Well, let me see...

Last month, Ray Comfort objected to being called "Religious", claiming that the word had "too many negative connotations". When I looked up the definition of "Religious", I found no such synonyms or connotations. So I actually bothered to ask Ray and others exactly what those "negative connotations" were, and nobody answered.

No doubt, you've heard or read definitions for words like "atheism", "liberal" from conservatives that go like this:

Conservapedia is veritable cornucopia of redefined words, revisionist history, and similar subjectivized information. They define Liberal like this:

A liberal can support many of the following political positions and practices:

* A government with large spending on social programs, and high taxes to support such programs

* Taxpayer-funded and/or legalized abortion

* Income redistribution, usually through progressive taxation

* Some argue that liberals typically support economic policy similar to that of fascism.

* Liberals claimed a monopoly on compassion, decency, and social justice (as defined by themselves), posing as the sole defenders of civic virtue against a horde of backwoodsmen, racists, and religious fanatics.

These definitions of the word are not found in standard dictionaries, and quite frankly, are so opinionated that they do not even pass any cursory test of objectivity.

John Willis said...

The fruit fly's lifetime is a matter of days. Because of this, they make great test subjects for subjecting them to radiation to induce mutations to test the macro-evolutionary hypothesis.

How many beneficial mutations do you think there have been to fruit flies after bombarding them with radiation over the last 30 years?...(literally thousands of generations.)

This all depends on what you mean by "beneficial". The study of fruit flies has actually yielded some of the most widely cited evidence for speciation (the evolution of a new species). Genetically isolated species of fruit flies have evolved and been observed. At least two species of fruit fly were evolved and became unable to mate with other species of fruit fly. They could only mate with each other, and had a whole series of different behaviors.

For more on this, see:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciation

http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=0309058775

BUt Fuit flies are not the only species that we've managed to observe evolving. Recently, an E. Coli bacteria study that has been going on for 20 years produced pretty much what you are asking for -- beneficial mutations.

See this for more info:
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/life/dn14094-bacteria-make-major-evolutionary-shift-in-the-lab.html

John Willis said...

Although you list some of the fossils you are refering to, can you provide the chronology of the transitional forms you are claiming leading up to homo sapiens?

Sure. I have several sources you can look at:

Wikipedia has an article with some charts:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_evolution

This textbook on Evolution, from the national Science Foundation, has a collection of charts and graphs:
http://www.evolution-textbook.org/content/free/figures/ch25.html

This talkorigins book has photos of fossils, and possibly the most comprehensive information assembled online on Human Evolution:
http://www.talkorigins.org/pdf/fossil-hominids.pdf

This article has lots of organized information, too:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/

John Willis wrote:

Your quote:
Dave wrote:

"Because of the shape of the skeleton (of australopithicines), we know they walked upright."

....is problematic because a complete skeleton of australopithicines does not exist, and the fossils we do have, have been found hundreds of miles apart.

Not true. In fact, the person who made that claim is Tom Willis, who wrote the claim in the October, 1987 issue of the Bible Science Newsletter. He claimed to have met Dr. Johanson, who was one of the discoverers of the fossil, and questioned him, and he admitted that the knee joint was found 3km away (not hundreds of miles -- the facts become distorted as the story gets circulated between people). Johanson said that he never said that, and that Willis must have either misunderstood his answer, or he misunderstood Willis' question. The bottom line is that Willis was wrong, and that subsequent investigations proved that Johanson was telling the truth (several Afarensis specimens are on record, some nearly complete).

Talkorigins Archive has this article on the matter:

To Summarize: At least eighteen creationists have made this bogus claim. Three have never responded in any way to questions about it (Girouard, Menton, Willis). Another two have not responded to further inquiries (Brown, McAllister). Only five have shown a willingness to discuss the matter (Chittick, the Nuttings, Sharp, Taylor), but one (Chittick) cut off correspondence. Four have agreed that the claim was in error and agreed to stop making it (Hovind, McAllister, Sharp, Taylor), and two agreed to stop making it if further investigation showed that the claim was bogus (the Nuttings) but have continued to repeat it. One (Arndts) has indicated a willingness to believe that the claim is in error but no interest in researching further or offering a correction because the article in which he made the claim just used it as an example of a type of error in reasoning. One (LaHaye) has insisted that the claim is not in error, but agreed to stop making it at the request of the Institute for Creation Research. Three (Baugh, Huse, Mehlert) have not yet been contacted for comment. One (Brown) now denies having made the claim at all. Only three (Menton, Morris, Sharp) have issued public corrections or clarifications.

I should add that the knee joint is not the only evidence for bipedalism -- the shape of the hips, the legs, and the feet, as well as the knee, as a whole group shows bipedalism.

Also, many people are unaware that you don't need a 100% complete skeleton to establish the shape of the specimen. Since most creatures have a right side that is a mirror-image of their left side, you can conclude that the arms of the left should be mirror images of the right arm, and so on.

John wrote:

Dave Wrote:

"Darwin also predicted that we should find common traits in related species, which extend to fossils of similar creatures. When we discovered DNA, we had an even better way of establishing relational links between species. Some fossils have had enough DNA left int hem to examine, and we have been able to establish links between fossils and modern species."

Can you give me an example? My research indicates we have found exactly the opposite to that prediction of Darwins with the discovery of DNA.

I'd be interested in seeing what your research included. Can you give me links?

Here are examples of DNA evidence that confirms Darwin's theory:

Analysis of Neanderthal and Human DNA:
http://www.archaeology.org/online/news/dna.html

http://www.jqjacobs.net/anthro/paleo/neanderthal.html

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/mtDNA.html

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Dinosaurs-Shared-the-Same-DNA-with-Birds-48875.shtml

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_birds

Essentially, We discovered that Neanderthals are not our ancestors, but a separate species, cousins, to humans. The discovery came when mitochondrial DNA was extracted from the tooth of a Neanderthal skull, and compared with modern human DNA. We also found that Therapod Dinosaurs (like T-Rex and Raptors) are genetic ancestors of all modern birds, after T-Rex DNA was extracted from a tooth. DNA has also been extracted from fossils trapped in amber, as well as from some fossil Dinosaur eggs. You will note that I did not rely exclusively on talk-origins material -- I got material from a variety of online sources.

John Willis said...

David wrote:

"The Theory also predicts that in heterogenus populations (a population that is very diverse and where different sub-species can interbreed) which live in a rapidly changing environment will see a greater degree of mutation. This is exactly what has been observed."

Can you give me an example and a reference please.

OKay, sorry, but I have no online sources for this. so here is a footnote:

Oliver, Antonio et al. 2000. High frequency of hypermutable Pseudomonas aeruginosa in cystic fibrosis lung infection. Science 288: 1251-1253. See also Rainey, P. B. and R. Moxon. 2000. When being hyper keeps you fit. Science 288: 1186-1187. See also: LeClerc, J. E. and T. A. Cebula. 2000. Pseudomonas survival strategies in cystic fibrosis (letter), 2000. Science 289: 391-392.

Essentially, a study of bacteria infecting the lungs of chronic cystic fibrosis patients revealed that strains of bacteria mutated new strains more rapidly in Cistic Fibrosis patients. This is probably not the best example, because it's rather technical.

Some evidence comes from the studies of the KT boundary, and the cambrian explosion. The KT boundary is the layer of radioactive iridium that indicates that an asteroid hit the planet (Iridium is not found naturally on earth). The estimated timeline is about 65 million years ago. It typically marks the end of the Dinosaur era. Immediately above the KT-layer, there are few fossils to be found, but after small gap, we start seeing therapsids and mammals, and a huge sudden explosion in new life forms. The Cambrian explosion began with, and was also ended by a similar mass-extinction, commonly called the Cambrian-Ordovician Extinction. Precambrian strata yeilds evidence of small, simple life forms. Then there is a layer similar to the KT boundary. Above this layer, we see the cambrian explosion -- lots of new life forms appearing, and what looks like rapid evolution. Then, towards the end of the cambrian era, we see another Mass extinction, called the Ordovician–Silurian extinction, followed by a gap where there is not a lot of fossils, then a sudden increase in new types of fossils, similar to the cambrian explosion, but with remarkably different forms. I'll assume you're aware of these facts, since you brought up the cambrian explosion. There are several Mass-Extinction events recorded in the fossil record and rock strata, and the patter of each of them is very simlar to what I just described.

John Willis said...

Can you give me an example of a transitional fossil between any of these major groups? And can you offer an explanation of why we do not see these transitional forms in Cambrian strata?

Cambrian Transitional Fossils contain the first major group -- invertebrate to vertebrate transitionals.

Check out these photos of actual fossils from this series:
http://facstaff.gpc.edu/~pgore/geology/geo102/burgess/burgess.htm

• Pikaia, an early invertebrate chordate. It was at first interpreted as a segmented worm until a reanalysis showed it had a notochord.
  
• Yunnanozoon, an early chordate.
  
• Haikouella, a chordate similar to Yunnanozoon, but with additional traits, such as a heart and a relatively larger brain (Chen et al. 1999).
  
• Conodont animals had bony teeth, but the rest of their body was soft. They also had a notochord (Briggs et al. 1983; Sansom et al. 1992).
  
• Cathaymyrus diadexus, the oldest known chordate (535 million years old; Shu et al. 1996).
  
• Myllokunmingia and Haikouichthys, two early vertebrates that still lack a clear head and bony skeletons and teeth. They differ from earlier invertebrate chordates in having a zigzag arrangement of segmented muscles, and their gill arrangement is more complex than a simple slit (Monastersky 1999).
  

Now there are transitional fossils between all the other groups, too. They are:

Ichtyosetigids -- They have both traits of fish and amphibians.
Seymoromorphs -- They have mixed amphibian and reptile traits.
Therapsids -- They have mixed mammal and reptile traits.

There are thousands of examples of each of these categories.

The reason these groups are particularly important is (a) Creationist literature says they do not exist, and (b) no creatures living today fit any of these categories.

If you don't know how to tell a reptile from a mammal by looking at the bones, here is a brief description. Mammals have the following exclusive traits (meaning only mammals have them, and you never see then in reptiles, birds, fish, or amphibians): A single jawbone, an inner ear with small bones for hearing, several types of specialized teeth in the skull, No fenestrae in the skull (Large open areas on either side of the skull), and most importantly, warm-bloodedness (indicated by canals inside of bones through which blood flows). Reptiles have multiple jawbones, no inner ear, one type of tooth, fenestrae, and no warm bloodedness.

Therapsids have a variety of exclusively mammalian and exclusively reptilian features -- such as cold bloodedness with multiple types of teeth, a single jaw with only one type of tooth, all reptilian except for no fenestrae in the skull. Mammals do not exist prior to the appearance of therapsids in the fossil record.

These are just a few of the dozens of species of note in the Therapsid family:

• Varanops
  
• Haptodus
  
• Dimetrodon
  
• Sphenacodon
  
• Exaeretodon
  

John Willis Wrote:

Further, why do we not see any fossil evidence in pre-Cambrian strata?

We do, actually.

This is a Wikipedia article that mentions Pre-cambrian fossils.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Cambrian

The Precambrian fossils that have been found are consistent with a branching pattern and inconsistent with a sudden Cambrian origin. For example, bacteria appear well before multicellular organisms, and there are fossils giving evidence of transitionals leading to halkierids and arthropods.

Evidence of microbial life forms are found throughout the pre-cambrian.

Any way, This is ther end of the list of questions that John had. If he chooses to pick it up, I'll continue it here. I also hope this article is useful to other people who are facing similar questions from creationists. This is about the 3rd time I've actually written this type of article, but the first time I've actually save it permanantly.

I intend to produce more work like this, because I think it would be helpful in educating people about science facts versus creationist propaganda.

Evangelical Pentagon Conspiracy...

Hey guys, check out My Latest posting at "Fundamentalist Deceit: An American Tradition". I read a few recent articles and collected some scary research. In short, the Pentagon and out Military Acadamies have been taken over by a cabal of Evanglical nut-jobs, who have been harrassing atheists, Jews, and women in the military. Read all about it!

Ray Comfort is totally Clueless

I seem to spend a lot of my blogging on Ray Comfort's moronic bloggings, but well, they are hilarious, in a morbid way. I mean, I've got mixed feelings about making fun of the mentally handicapped. On the one hand, it seems cruel to poke fun at people who don't know any better, and who obviously are in serious need of psychotherapy or medication. On the other hand, Ray makes a lot more money than I do, has command of lots of followers, and has national exposure on his TV shows, so I don't feel bad at all making fun of a person whose career seems to revolve around exposing his personal insanity to the world. After all, nobody thought it was cruel to poke fun at Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush when they were displaying their lack of intelligence to the world. Ray is no different.

In his latest Blog, titles, appropriately "Circular Reasoning, Etc.", Ray re-affirms that he has no clue, and that he still doesn't know the meanings to several words and phrases that we atheists have frequently used in discussion.

Ray Comfort wrote:

"Reading comments between Christians and atheists is sometimes frustrating."

Yes, It's frustrating for Ray to have a battle of wits, while unarmed.

Ray continues:

"Most of the Christians are very polite and try to address the issues"

On this point I tend to disagree. SOME are polite. Others give into ranting and arrogantly castigating us rational objectors. But I digress.

Ray continues:

"and the atheists are generally arrogant and word-twisting,"

You cannot twist words when your word meanings come straight from the English Dictionary. If anything, Ray and his people are ones to twist words, especially last week, he claimed that he objected to being called religious, "because it has so many negative connotations", despite the fact that several online dictionaries failed to have anything negative in their definitions of the word,and no thesaurus had any negative synonyms of it, either.

I pointed out that far too often, it is "people of faith" (is that a less offensive euphamism than "religious"?) and "extremists" of various types who mince their words and try to redefine well-established English words to suit their agendas, and I believe I succeeded in proving my point with several examples of words that Ray and others have their own special meanings for that are not really found in dictionaries.

Ray continues:

"while resorting to ridicule and personal attacks. They keep saying the same old things, such as, “Prove to me that God exists without using the Bible. If you use the Bible that’s 'circular reasoning.'” That is nothing short of ridiculous. It’s like saying, “Prove to me that the President lives in the White House, but don’t look into the White House.”

Actually, it's not like that at all, but it is possible to prove that the president lives in the White House without actually going there and looking into the building itself. I would check the phone books, have him followed by a camera crew, and verify how long he spends there with other methods. I never need to be on the property to find proof.

Ray has confirmed for us all that he still does not understand what circular reasoning is, nor do I think we can ever get him to have any revelations about why circular reasoning is inherently irrational, and illogical.

Let me illustrate from his history. Remember when he debated the Rational Response Squad?
(1) he claimed that he could "scientifically" prove that God exists, without referring to scriptures.
(2) he claimed that God exists outside of the physical universe, and that the realm of the supernatural is beyond the ability of science to detect.
(3) his first attempt to "scientifically prove" God's existence was to start quoting the 10 commandments, and other parts of the Bible.

First of all, do you see the blatant contradictions here? First he said that God can be proven scientifically. Then, he claimed that God is beyond Science's ability to detect -- which completely negates the possibility of using science to prove his existence! Then he claimed that he could prove God's existence without using the scriptures, and his first point was to quote the 10 commandments, which is a second blatant contradiction.

Now he is saying that it is impossible to prove God's existence WITHOUT referring to scriptures, so he's contradicting him 3 times. Doesn't he understand what a contradiction actually is, and why contradictory statements like his are irrational and illogical? As I said, since we've been beating his brow, it looks like he hasn't learned anything.

It looks like Ray Comfort does not understand:
(1) what a contradiction actually is,
(2) What the word "religious" means,
(3) What circular reasoning is, and
(4) What a straw-man argument is.

He really should resort to an English dictionary whenever he has trouble with English words and phrases that he still obviously do not understand. The problem is that his fans and followers don't know any better, either, always back him up mindlessly and support everything he says, but are reluctant to correct him when he's wrong. It's the same syndrome as George W. Bush -- he's surrounded by people who never criticize him when he says something completely stupid, and because of that, he never really knows how much of an ass of himself he is making.

Why Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron are Ccomplete Morons

The American form of Evangelical Fundamentalist Biblical Literalist Christianity (can you say that in one breath?) that Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron preach is arguably the most insipidly childish form that the Christian faith can take. It preaches internal elitism, or the idea that followers are automatically superior in some way to non-followers, just because they have faith placed in the proper form of Christianity (allegedly). It promotes the idea that no matter how ridiculous any passage from the Bible is, it should be taken literally. They are proponents of what William Jennings Bryan once said, when asked if he believed that Jonah was literally swallowed by a whale, "If the Bible said that Jonah swallowed the whale, I'd believe it!" They promote an anti-science and anti-intellectual agenda, and will readily admit to shoddy journalism (because they don't even know what good journalism is).

Take Ray Comfort's latest book, "Evolution, a Fairy Tale for Grownups" as an example. Ray is forthcoming in admitting that he knows in advance that people will criticise him of quote-mining, where a writer removes a quote from it's original context to deliberately distort the meaning of what the quoted person was saying. Well, he wasn't predicting this because he had great foresight. As anyone who reads his blog knows, he test-fired many passages from his book months in advance, and we had to explain to him what quote mining was. The phrase "quote mining" became his favorite word for a while, and he was quick to attempt to ridicule people who used it, saying that they were mindlessly chanting it like a mantra. From the forward of his book, it's clear that he has absolutely no idea why quote mining is a terrible journalistic practice, or what good and proper journalism is. He says:

No doubt you will accuse me of "quote mining" (for those who don't know what that is, it's the practice of taking a quote--often out of its context, and using it in a way that was never intended by the author). However, every gold nugget is legitimately mined out of its context. No one seriously values the earth that encases the gold. So, when I uncover an evolutionary expert quietly admitting that he has no evidence to back up his theory, I don’t see any value in the soil of his surrounding words. I merely extract what I believe is of value for those who want to discover the truth about the theory of evolution.

From this quote, it's quite clear that Ray simply is clueless that the process that he just described is a dishonest process, condemned by journalists world-wide, and the tool of propagandists for ages. He openly admits to mining quotes out of context, because he apparently believes that the context that the quotes were pulled out of is irrelevent. As we shall see, his research into these quotes was practically non-existant. He got his quotes from other creationists, and did not bother to check the original quotes to see if they were, in fact, correct. Some may ask "why should Ray have done that? Do other creationists lie?" Well, unfortunately, for Ray, and other practitioners of America's dumbest sect, the answer is a very strong YES. The creationist movement in America is all about lies, deceptions, half-truths, shoddy-research, and willful cluelessness.

By making such an admission, he's literally telling those in the educated world that he has no concept of journalistic integrity, and that his book will be full of examples of misquotes. That's not quite what you want to tell people as they start readign your book, but then again, his audience are the pathetically clueless Evangelicals who are just as inept and intellectually absent as he is.

Ray's blog is a modern wonder of contradictions and arrogant ignorance. Ray makes lots of brainless statements in his blog, and when people point out his mistakes and contradictions, he defends himself -- with even dumber mistakes and contradictions. Take for example, his conversation with an atheist. Ray Claimed:

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to look at this amazing creation and see the genius of the amazing Creator. A child can know that. Your stumbling-block isn't intellectual as you maintain. . . it's moral. (Ray Comfort, 12:57 PM May 26, 2008)

But he had previously given us this contradiction:

However, the reason your conscience has nothing to say about your atheism is that atheism is not a moral issue. It’s an intellectual issue. (Ray Comfort, 3:46 PM May 18, 2008)

Apparently, Ray didn't seem to realize that there is a problem with such contradictory statements. The atheists pointed out his contradiction a few times, and it didn't phase him at all!

Then he throws out this zinger:

It is pathetic. I want genuine science. Not theories.

These nine words practically demonstrate the complete scientific illiteracy that Ray has. He obviously doesn't understand that science is inseparable from theories, because theories tie science together. Theories are explanatory conceptual frameworks that help answer questions or explain how things work. Real science is theories. Ray doesn't like one particular theory, that of evolution, therefore, he has latched onto the idiotic concept that a theory is just a guess.

Perhaps the most hilarious display of unbridled ignorance and stupidity from the Way Of the Master people, is Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort's series of videos on evolution, which offers arguments against Evolution that make Kent Hovind look like Stephen Hawking by comparison!

In the video, Comfort and Cameron insist that their arguments against evolution are strictly intellectual in nature, but around every corner, they whip out Bible verses. One way they allegedly prove that evolution is false, is to rely heavily on interviews on the street with tenagers who openly admit that they don't know what the evidence for evolution is, or what the answer to various science questions are. It never did occur to them to go to the National science Foundation, or even a local university to ask those questions from people who actually profess to know the answers!

Next, they move on to prove that we couldn't possibly have evolved from apes, by interviewing an Orangutan! Yes, because the Orangutan can't speak English, and doesn't use science and cannot converse about intellectual topics, this is their proof that we could not possibly be related to them. Never mind the genetic evidence in our DNA, or the similarities in Brain structure, or the fact that many apes have been tested and can easily solve technological puzzles that scientists have put to them. Never mind the fact that our DNA is more closely related to Chimps than to any other creature on earth. Never mind that DNA sequencing, which is used to settle identity and paternity questions, has shown how related we are.

Cameron then comes on and says "There are no missing links between Ape and man", and also that "All the fossils claimed to be human ancestors were found to be just apes."

Cameron completely ignores the 20 or so hominid species, nearly all of which walked upright like you and me, and most of which have been found with stone tools and other artifacts.

If that's not enough, they completely ignore the entire fossil record itself, by claiming that there are no transitional fossils, and that none have ever been found. Never mind that transitional fossils are actually very plentiful, and that several whole taxonomic groups of fossils are strictly transitional in nature.

If you don't piss your pants laughing at this video, they have a whole other bunch of them to choose from. I've watched about 12 of their videos this week, on various topics, but mostly science, and these guys, when put together, are actually less intelligent than a lot of 4th graders. They parade out shoddy reasoning, and plain retarded statements, which of course, they haven't checked. The result is a religious ministry that caters to extremely dumb, uneducated, possibly insane people.

And that, in short, is the reason why I consider Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron to be a couple of morons.

10 most Dangerous books...

Conservatives and Fundamentalists love making lists of things that people should avoid. Whenever I read stuff like like this, it burns my biscuits, because not only do these people literally tell people not to read books (advocating a type of book banning), they usually put books on the list just for their own political propaganda point, rather than sticking to some actual criteria to guide their selection.

In this Bozo's list, you will see that he added "The Kinsey Report". Now, unfortunately, there is no such book. The books that Kinsey put out are "Sexual Behavior in the Human Male" and "Sexual Behavior In the Human Female", which are often referred to as the Kinsey reports. What harm did Kinsey's book do? I guess it must be a dangerous book because it showed facts that conservatives don't like to talk about -- like the fact that homosexuals and lesbians exist, or the fact that most people have sex before marriage. I'm pretty sure that nobody died as a result of reading Kinsey's books, and I'm pretty sure that it was not used as a tool of opression by any political regime.

Betty Friedan's "The Feminine Mistique" is on the list, probably because the author is a stuck up conservative old fart who doesn't like the idea of women holding jobs, being independant, and voting. Friedan's book was an inspiration to generations of American women who realized that traditional lifestyles, which had women staying home and raising kids while men worked, was not the only option available. The book is clearly on his list because like most conservatives, he can't stand uppity women who have minds of their own.

Neitzsche's book, "Beyond Good And Evil" is most likely on the list merely because it's an atheist book. The concept of "beyond Good and Evil" is rarely presented accurately, either because of poor translation from German, or because Religious nuts with an agenda rely on "what they heard about it", rather than actually reading it. Neitzsche's book was not an inspiration to the Nazis at all, which is a typical conservative myth.

I saw other lists from similar conservative sites that put Darwin's book, "Origin Of Species", and we know why that's there. Apparently Nazis got inspired by it, which isn't obvious, since it was on their list of banned books, and it was forbidden to mention Darwin's theories in schools.

So I decided to compile my own list to act as a kind of opposing position to these conservative lists. The difference, of course, is that I used the following criteria to judge the books by:

(1) Did people die as a result of others getting inspiration from the book?
(2) Was the book used as a tool of opression by a government?
(3) Did the book have a large impact on the world?

Malleus Maleficarum (Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger, 1487) -- Led to the torture and killing of hundreds of thousands of people in Europe.

On The Jews and Their Lies (Martin Luther, 1543) -- This book still inspires antisemitism today. The nazis reprinted and distributed the book in WW2.

The Protocols of the Learned Elders Of Zion (1903) -- This forgery inspired antisemitism in Russia, Germany, and the United States. There are still people who claim that the book is an actual document of a global Jewish Conspiracy, despite the clear documentary evidence that it was written by one of Tzar Alexander's Generals just before the Russian Revolution.

The Communist Manifesto (Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, 1848), and The Wealth Of Nations (Adam Smith, 1776) -- These two books are the inspiration for the two competing economic systems of the world that molded the 20th century. The conflict between advocates of capitalism and communism killed millions in the 20th century, and will likely continue to affect us well into the next century.

Mein Kampf (Adolph Hitler, 1925) -- What else needs to be said for the book that defined the Nazis?

The Bible, The Qu'Ran, and The Book Of Mormon -- These 3 religious texts all claim to be peaceful inspirational works, but the worldviews in these books have created great conflict in the world, especially between Christianity and Islam. The body count for the Book Of Mormon is small by comparison, but think of how large the Mormon church has become. It's beliefs are opressive, and cult-like, and women are definitely not equal.

The Prince (Niccolo Machiavelli, 1532) -- This book inspired many dictators, and was a personal guide to Joseph Stalin.

There definitely is a conflict between science and religion

In polite society, where we try to put our best face on, and often talk around issues by doing it nicely and politely, it's often customary to adopt positions of neutrality to prevent our discussion partners whom we occaisionally disagree with, from being insulted or to establish that you are approaching a topic from a neutral position out of respect.

In the past, one such "neutral position" has been the one that goes "Science and religion are two different topics, and need not neccesarily be in conflict with one another." Sometimes, we like to add to that that because science deals with the natural world, and is merely a methodology for finding out how things works, and because religion deals with morality and philosophy, that they can't really be in conflict, because they are two entirely different topics. The statement that science and religion do not conflict is sort of a polite man's way of establishing space between religion and science, to assert that there are no conflicts, and that we either are talking science or we are talking religion, but we can't mix them.

Well, after much thought, and a newsgroup discussion, I came to the conclusion that this idea that there is no conflict between religion and science is simply not true. It may be polite to use the statement, but ultimately, it's just not true. There is plenty of conflict between religion and science.

First off, the methodology of science is specifically designed to get to the truth of the matter by seriously probing a topic, testing the results, and going where those facts take you. Religion, by contrast, dictates truth, and nothing can oppose the official dogma, not even science. In fact, the history of science and religion has shown us that religion, when it's got political power in a society, as it did during the Renaissance, often opressed science brutally. Whether we're talking Giordano Bruno, Galileo, or others, the fact is that when scientific truths are discovered which conflict with religious dogma, religion's response is to deny it, and try to supress or subvert science to silence it from contradicting faith and dogma.

Religions are made of dogmas that constantly overlap with science. The virgin Birth concept, for example, clearly says something about biology. The idea that the Soul enters the body at conception clearly has legal and biological implications. The problem is that these topics have a complete lack of scientific backing to them, and they are actually harmful when enough people who believe in them have the power, for example, to deny funding to medical research on embryonic stem cells, which could save lives and cure diseases.

It's not just science, either, it's history, too. History, though having a slightly different methodology, is nonetheless a methodology, which, like science, is designed to extract truth from fiction, and find the facts in a sea of conjecture. Religions often make historical claims, and often, these claims are directly in opposition to recorded history. Archaeology was once dominated by a pro-Christian bias, and to a degree, certain topics in history still are. But over the last century, many interesting facts concerning the ancient world have been discovered that conflict with long held religious dogmas, and have become accepted fact.

The progression of Pharoahs in Egyptian history is one of the more notable ones. In the Old Testament, the lineage of Pharoahs is listed, and for years, archaeologists associated various dates to various Pharoahs, based on the Bible, because the paradigm was that the Bible was always correct. But more recently, lineages written in the stone of ancient tombs and on buildings revealed a whole bunch of Pharoahs that the Bible skipped over, and we even found the mummies of the those individuals.

Even medicine and public health issues are not safe from Religious dogma. Remember the fury over the first birth control pills? Religious groups, particularly Catholics, protested and continue to this day to try to either outlaw contraceptives, and Evangelical Protestants have had a serious effect on US foreign aid to Africa, effectively preventing condoms from being sent to Africa to prevent AIDS. Sex education in the USA is forbidden in many places from even mentioning anything about contraception, which had led to a lot of patently false misinformation on sex being spread in some schools. One texas school taught kids that kids could get pregnant from oral sex, refering to the mythical infants conceived via filatio as Spit Babies".

So the idea that religion doesn't conflict with science really is not true. It does. It has profound effects on public life, and can even lead to dangerous outcomes. We should not discount the attempts of evangelicals to push creationism on our public schools as futile attempts. We should oppose it with the same determination that African Americans opposed Jim Crowe laws. Religions do not merely infringe on scientific facts, they infringe on historical facts, politics, education, public health, and society in general. We should stop using the notion that science and religion aren't really in conflict, and admit the truth. They clearly are, and the more people there are who accept religious dogma over scientific truth, the more opression, misinformation, and ignorance there will be.

Toothless and the Subway Preachers

Every day I take the subway to get to work. I drive or walk to the station, then I squeeze into a crowded subway car. Some stations have musicians busking for cash, and others have... street preachers!

Years ago, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority banished street preachers from subway stations, because people were irritated by these screaming luantics, who seemed to have no sense and no care that some people's ears were hurting from hearing their echoing, loud, and annoying voices.

The Subway authority welcomes musical performers, and has strict rules on volume -- nobody is allowed to be louder than the PA system, because people need to hear that for safety instructions.

Some street preachers figured out a clever way to get around the ban, though. They applied for musical performance permits, and entered the subway with guitars in hand. Unfortunately, for music lovers, none of these people seemed to know how to play their guitars, or at least could not play an actual song on them. These street preachers in musician's wool, would literally just strum one or two chords, and preach, although, thankfully, they maintained a volume that was tolerable. Many street preachers still do this today, and recently I met an interesting character.

I call him Toothless. Toothless is an older Afro-American man, with greying hair and a children's size guitar. Yes, he has no teeth. He plays the blues really well, and can belt out a soulful, rousing tenor voice. His voice is really awesome... but sadly, he never uses it much. He has kind of a crazy look to his face, and literally just sits there, strumming random chords on the guitar, and saying "priase the lord" over and over and over again. I sat there for an extended period while a disabled train forced my car to stay in the station for an extra 10 minutes. Toothless started out with a real great blues song, "Oooooooh, Lord, what shall I dooooo? Ooooooooh Lord, what shall I dooooooooo? Lord I'm so down, I don't know whaaaaaaat to do!"

His voice is somewhere between Winonie Harris and Bullmoose Jackson, and he really plays his tiny guitar like a pro, but he only does it for about a verse or two, then he breaks out into just preaching the same few sentences over and over again. Part of me wants to tell him to go away, but the few times he belts out that voice makes me want to coach him and cultivate that talent so he can draw more donations from the crowd.

Even as a non-believer, I'd love to give him some advice and see if he tries it out. I really want to hear him sing the blues. I've thought about talking to him, and giving him an idea, like taking a psalm from the Bible, and just turning it into the lyrics of a blues song -- many great lamentations are found in the Bible, and in fact, many blues singers have used the Bible as a source for song lyrics. He could just take a few verses, and set them to Blues music, and Bang, he can mix blues with street preaching in a way that could be unique and creative.

Yeah -- I would like to do that, even though I'm an atheist and can't stand preachers. I think the guy has talent that just needs to be focussed. He seems dazed and confused the way he is now.

Too many people who want to preach on the streets or in the subway have no talent for it. That's what's really annoying. People like Jed Smock, the great grandfather of modern confrontational street preaching is largely an untalented man who figured that just screaming and ranting to get attention from people got him an audience. Sure -- if you act like a maniac, many people will watch you, in the same way that people watch a crazy drunken person -- they watch them to avoid them, or to make sure that they do not get too close and have to call the police for help.

If street preachers are going to get music permits to play in subways and parks, they should at least have some talent, first. I mean, they should at least be able to play a few songs competently. Nothing is worse than a person who gets a permit to perform in a public place, who has no musical intentions whatsoever. I remember one Street Preacher guy who just had a Karaoke box, and he'd stand there and sing Gospel songs. At least he sang and carried a tune, for crying out loud. Nowadays, we get people who don't even try to sing. They just blatantly use the musicians' permit to street preach to something that is barely music. The city only gives out so many permits, and these losers are taking permits away from actual talented musicians who really play good music. Some of the actual musicians, whose permits are being taken by shill street preacher musicians, need the money that comes from handouts.

I heard that some preachers in New York have taken street-preaching to new levels of infamy. They are actually boarding the subway cars in small groups of 3-to-6 people, and when the doors close and the train starts moving, they stand up and start the fire-and-brimstone screaming. Reports are athat these people are pretty much hated by New Yorks's subway riders, and the police have been unable to identify them and prevent them from breaking the subways's rules (it's against the rules to yell in a subway car or create a scene), because they all get off at the next stop, and board a different train.

It wouldn't be so bad if these street preachers had a sense of personal space and respect for people's ears. The screaching of the train's wheels and the clackety-clack noise of the tracks is irritating enough. To have a bunch of people start jumping up and down, screaming and trying to be louder than the noise of the train, can literally create hell in a subway car.