Silly Ideas

Silly (euphemistically speaking) ideas, for the purposes of this blog, are either
● irritatingly illogical inaninities that are repeated ad nauseam by their devotees
● strongly held opinions about cause and effect that ignore or are ignorant of the facts and that run counter to widely known expert opinion
● ideas that have proved deleterious to their holders or others

● Many if not most ideas connected to an insistence on the 'existence' of one non-existent deity or another are illogical because they insist upon belief despite the lack of supportive empirical evidence when there ought to be empirical evidence. After all, if a purported deity actually created the universe, with or without interference in daily events, then there ought to be unequivocal evidence that links the physical with said deity – just as there is abundant evidence to link known physical laws with the origin of the universe and evolution.

There is no evidence of a deity unless one chooses to label physical laws as being God and to designate scientists as being the true theologians. That is, it is illogical to insist that there is a Creator of the Physical Universe, Life, and Us in the absence of any unequivocal evidence of a single entity capable of creating these tangibles. This illogic includes most perniciously, of course, the various ridiculous forms adopted by insistence upon literal interpretation of the Genesis creation myth.

● Fantasies, such as the supposed existence of the 'soul' or an 'afterlife' that run counter to all that science reveals about the inextricable connection between a functioning assemblage of chemicals and operation of the brain. There is neither evidence for–nor logical grounds for–any claim that the 'soul' has existence outside current-conscious-thought.

● Claims that 'God is Consciousness', such that some cosmic consciousness directs all that transpires in the universe, or even merely here on Earth, are akin to nonsensical claims for brain-independent souls and an afterlife. Those who believe that the sole motive force is 'thought' have applied very little–or nothing–in the way of analytical thought to their illogical beliefs. The meaning of 'thought' inherent in such illogical equivocation must necessarily be so broad as to bear no resemblence to the accepted meaning of 'thought' or of 'consciousness'.

● Insistence by Bible Thumpers on their holier-than-thou, unethical, absolute moral values that were supposedly dictated by their non-existent deity-of-choice. By unethical, I refer to those illogical attacks that harm others who do not fit into the rigid black and white box dictated by the thumpers' dogma-of-choice. While it is reasonable to decry as immoral any action that deliberately harms others, it is immoral to harm others by censuring activities that harm no-one.

● Denial of the fact of global warming despite the agreement of experts (earth and climate scientists) that rising levels of greenhouse gases (fact) attributable to our burning of fossil fuels (fact) have elevated average temperatures (fact) and increased frequency of extreme weather events (fact).

That'll do for starters!

ɷ All Concepts are NOT created Equal
ɷ Anti-Stupidity Quotes
ɷ Autovaccinism
ɷ Behe Retreats
ɷ Besottism
ɷ Black Sheep are Sheep Too
ɷ Canadians Can be Stupid Too
ɷ Claims that Scientists find Extraterrestrial genes...
ɷ Complexity Reductio
ɷ Free Speech or Propaganda of Hate?
ɷ Numbers Games
ɷ Pet Peeves
ɷ Pseudoscience Chicanery
ɷ Shun Spam
ɷ Statistics on Stupidity

Quo Vadis?
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Creationism only flourishes amidst Ignorance

I found the following example of ignorance amongst the comments on an article about the museum-of-delusion constructed by oxymoronically labelled Answers in Genesis. Those who are so ignorant as to believe in creationism are not really interested in answers, but I want to vent!

"To all of those evolutionists out there: Can you tell me ONE instance of an organism that proves that NEW information was ADDED to its DNA? NOT a LOSS of genetic info that leads to an environmental advantage, but an actual ADDITION of NEW information to the DNA?"

First, there can be no proof outside special philosophical syllogisms and mathematics. Only the ignorant or emotionally-uncertain demand proof. However, there is abundant evidence, throughout organisms from prokaryotes to humans of the addition/alteration of segments of DNA. There is so much evidence that one could not list it all. See for yourself – running a PubMed search for "DNA evolution" yielded 53983 hits (5/27/07). Of course, not all of these scientific articles will directly address this creationist challenge, so I Googled "DNA evolution" and got 47,100,000 hits. Some of these will be websites set up by creationists as ignorant as the author of that stupid question, but many will provide an accurate answer.

Creationist are correct in stating that DNA contains information, so any alteration of a DNA sequence, even if it is only a single nucleotide polymorphism (point mutation), comprises evidence of the addition of new information to DNA. To ask for "proof" of the addition of new information to DNA is beyond ridiculous. Any organism that develops a malignancy does so because of alterations in their DNA. Childrens' DNA is not identical to that of either parent because of an alteration in their DNA. The diversity of DNA, which is demonstrably currently continuing to evolve, is evidence of addition of information to DNA. No need to go on–there are billions of examples.

"Answers in Genesis' website explains that this is the big obstacle for evolutionary belief. What mechanism could possibly have added all the extra genetic information required to change a one-celled creature into a multicelled organism, then other more "complex" organisms?"

This, of course, is why Answers in Genesis is misnamed. (There are no accurate answers to questions in Genesis, which was, is, and always will be an allegorical creation myth. Nor are there any answers in AiG–merely delusions.)

Again, science has documented abundant evidence regarding mechanisms, which include prokaryotic gene-swapping mechanisms (HGT), serial endosymbiotic transfers, and a variety of internal-mutation mechanisms (duplication, etc.). The very first soft-bodied multicellular organisms died without leaving any fossil trace around 1 billion years ago. It is utterly unreasonable to expect that this step in evolution can ever be exactly replicated. However, the molecular biological mechanisms of cellular adhesion that exist today were likely the same mechanisms that allowed the first co-operative assemblages of specialized cells (the colonial theory providing the likeliest explanation). Serial endosymbiotic transfers rendered this step possible, and the oxygen produced by the first prokaryotes to practice oxygenic photosynthesis both drove and enabled such assemblages.

"Natural selection can’t explain it as natural selection involves getting rid of information."

Natural selection operates to increase the frequency of favourable alleles and reduce unfavourable alleles in populations. The amount of information is much the same following selection for the organisms best equipped to survive and produce viable progeny within a particular environment. Only utterly unfavourable mutations will be removed, while neutral and favourable mutations will persist. Natural selection has never been regarded as a mechanism for the alteration of DNA itself.

"A group of animals might become more adapted to the heat by the elimination of those which carry the genetic information to make thick fur. But that doesn’t explain the origin of the information to make thick or thin fur."

Nor, as above, do any evolutionary biologists claim that natural selection, which can only operate on already existent alleles, is the mechanism for producing the genes.

"As a Biological Sciences major in college . . . "

Now this is truly very sad! This poser-of-stupid-questions is better educated than your average creationist, yet clearly does not comprehend even the basics of molecular or population genetics. This sort of ignorance is the reason that critics decry anti-science, deceptive-pseudoscience displays that merely entrench such ignorance.

"I was also disappointed and angry to discover that several of the big "evidences" for evoution given to us in school were NOT true, and that these are still taught to students today as truth."

Where did this person attend college? Presumably a small southern college and not one of the better universities. The above is a truly ridiculous statement. Evidence is evidence is evidence. Scientific theories are formulated on the basis of evidence, which translates to saying that scientific theories begin with the facts. The evidences for biological evolution are FACTS. Whether or not a particular theory best explains the facts is a different question, and this is the entire point of the scientific method.

"It is time students were taught all the facts about evolution, not just the ones that fit the THEORY best! I pray the AiG museum will open a lot of eyes to the deception carried on by the biologists promoting evolution."

The voluminous facts about biological evolution are conveniently ignored by those who believe in creation, in biblical literacy, and in some non-existent necessary-connection between morality and religious dogmatism. The author of the ridiculous comment that I have quoted is clearly incapable of comprehending the facts. As to manipulating information to fit theories, the AiG museum is a transparent example of the sort of distortion of facts that is necessary in order to support an utterly ridiculous two- thousand-plus-year old theory (YEC). Although they do not admit this explicitly, creationist attacks on science implicitly indicate that they are aware that scientific facts disprove the claims in Genesis–proof may not be possible, but disproof is possible. Genesis IS disproven. Dinosaurs did not coexist with hominids, rather the dinosaurs predated hominids by 60 million years. No number of deceptive lie-orama displays will ever alter that fact.

I'd further suggest to the author of the stupid-question that his or her inability to understand something does not render that thing invalid. It merely means that he or she really ought to obtain some education. Given that an ABC News poll indicates that "60 percent of Americans believe God created the world in six days" (a fallacious argumentum ad numeram argument for creationism, incidentally), then it is clear that far too may Americans exhibit a lamentably low standard of science education.

More mutterings about the stupidity that is creationism:
ɷ Myths Revered and Myths Exposed
ɷ un-designed intelligences
ɷ Judge Jones Rules
ɷ The Wedge Document

Elsewhere: Gallup Poll on Evolution, which reveals that the overwhelming majority of religious fundamentalists are ignorant of evolution : comment on Pharyngula : Religion—our maelstrom of ignorance: "Maybe we need to start picketing fundamentalist churches. Maybe it's about time that we recognize religious miseducation as child abuse."

Quo Vadis?
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Bible Bumping

Bible Thumping combined with Bible Bashing ... get it? Corny, corny, corny.

The Bible is filled with internal consistencies that are critiqued on other sites. It is the position of the authors that the Bible is an allegory with minimal historical accuracy. It cannot be the word of God, since it is the only "evidence" for the existence of a God for which their is no incontrovertible evidence.

All opinions expressed here are those of the authors – all Devout Atheists.

ɷ In God, Distrust
ɷ Agnostic vs Atheist
ɷ Agnosticism is NOT more rational than Atheism
ɷ Apologists make Apologies for God
ɷ Besottism
ɷ Canadians Can be Stupid Too
ɷ Dei Non Existent
ɷ Dawkins refutes Behe
ɷ Furor over Stupidity
ɷ Inverse Correlations
ɷ Moral Absolutism
ɷ One Evolution, Many Creationisms
ɷ Spirituality, Religiosity, and Madness
ɷ Statistics on Stupidity
ɷ un-designed intelligences = intelligent [sick] design
ɷ YEC yack

Silly religiously-motivated ideas:
ɷ Creationism only flourishes amidst Ignorance
ɷ Myths Revered and Myths Exposed
ɷ Judge Jones Rules
ɷ The Wedge Document

Quo Vadis?
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Agnostic vs Atheist

"It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone to believe anything upon insufficient evidence”
~ W. K. Clifford (1879)

Those of religious bent and the fantasy prone choose to believe what they choose to believe. Such individuals seem to select whatever opinion provides most emotional appeal without regard to logic or empirical evidence.

Religious types come in various levels of dogmatism and subscribe to different human-invented creeds. Most are theists, whereas others believe in equally nutty nonsense like the so-called "Science of Mind" that has zip to do with science.

Creationists of various ilks deny our close relationship (more than 98% shared DNA) with the chimpanzee in order to protect their illusion of Special Creation.

Technically, an agnostic holds that the existence or nonexistence of a supernatural deity is unknowable. While this is philosophically rigorous, what is the point of copping out by leaving room for the indeterminable supernatural?

As soon as a supposed supernatural entity has interacted with the physical, then that purported supernatural agent has entered the realm of the physical and has abandoned supernatural status. Those religions that include creation myths necessarily make a claim that the formerly-supernatural has interfered with the physical. This creation-interaction must, by definition, reduce, or elevate, the supernatural to the physical. Goodbye special supernatural status.

Agnosticism can take the position that the possibility that whatever claimed teapot or deity actually exists is vanishingly small, but agnosticism allows some wiggle room for the vanishingly remote possibility that any particular candidate-claim has validity.

Whereas agnosticism carefully perches on the fence, atheism expresses more certainty than to say, "we just can't know". The small "a" atheist simply says, "I don't believe that God exists", wheras a capital "A" Atheist is certain that, "God does not exist." Philosophical purism aside, all the evidence indicates that the God of the Bible does not exist.

Christians, my prime targets in this expose-stupidity campaign, hold that their supposed Creator did indeed interfere in the physical up until 2,000 years ago, since which time God appears to have understandably grown bored with Christians. Of course, Christians keep this conditionally-loving God on hand for their supposed afterlife, aka death.

Bertrand Russell was a famous debunker of religious nonsense and said in Is There a God?, “If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.”

Russell, as ever, makes a good point. Any fantasist can concoct any fanciful story, padded with a layer of non-falsifiable protection, and can insist that the story is accurate by virtue of the glitch that it cannot be disproven. Such a claim, of course, commits the logical error of argumentum ad ignorantiam. If the claim was first made in antiquity, it is imbued with an undeserved veneer of credibility.

The invention of supposed prophecies did not, of course, end with Jesus. Supposed prophets have been popping up with dismaying regularity since Jesus' preachings.

The problem for creationists, particularly for YECs, is that Genesis does make falsifiable physical claims that do stand disproven by science. Somewhere along the way, some creationist has comprehended enough science to realize this major problem and the era of Misleading Pseudoscience for Dummies was ushered in. The fact is, creationists promulgate ignorance and falsehoods in support of what they mistakenly call "Truth". YECs lie about the actual age of the Earth, while believers in pseudointellectual intelligent [sick] design theory accept the actual age of the Earth, but lie about the identity of the supposed-designer, and distort science ranging from cosmology to evolutionary biology.

Considering the ubiquity of invented religions, evolution clearly has not expanded our intellectual capacities to a sufficient degree for humans to justifiably designate our species as "sapiens" and certainly not as "sapiens sapiens".

___

"An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support."

Quo Vadis?
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Spirituality, Religiosity, and Madness

Spirituality has been defined as the experience of an inner sense of something greater than oneself, or as sensing a meaning to existence that transcends one's immediate circumstances.

Despite being a confirmed atheist, I am not immune to such experiences. Obviously I am cognitively aware that the world of nature is greater than myself. To believe otherwise would make me a megalomaniac! Besides, how could a part be greater than the whole?

However, the wonderful, euphoric feeling that nature is greater than I comes upon me less often. Sensing a transcendent meaning has come to me only in dreams or under the influence of certain psychoactive chemicals – both being altered states of consciousness. Shamans know all about this phenomenon when they use mood altering drugs to induce spiritual hallucinations during religious ceremonies. Even those who have never taken a hallucinogen have probably experienced dreams that convey a strong sense of having uncovered a deeper meaning to life – only to have the answer to the mystery dissipate rapidly upon awakening!

We have numerous different understandings of religion. Religion deals with the same subject matter as spirituality, yet it is not equivalent. On this blog, religion is taken to mean the system of dogmatic teachings that have arisen out of an assumption that the supernatural actually exists. That is, religious systems are built upon superstitious beliefs in magical powers.

Religious rites, like any rites, can induce a sense of peace or invoke passion. This emotional evocation speaks more of our communal attachment to symbols than it does to any valid existence of the supernatural. To understand what I mean, think of your reaction to hearing your national anthem played when one of your countrymen has won Olympic gold.

Reliogiosity is not equivalent to spirituality, though both can coexist in one individual. Atheists can have spiritual experience and religious individuals can lack spiritual experiences.

The psychology of religiosity is intriguing, as are the psychopathologies, such as schizophrenia that appear to be related to religiosity. Why do some individuals seems so prone to spiritual and/or religious convictions?

V.S. Ramachandran and his team studied the increased religiosity of sufferers of temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE). The results of the study showed a greater arousal in the temporal lobe epilepsy sufferers in response to religious words as compared to the non-religious. The non-religious were more aroused by sexual words, while religious control groups were aroused by religious and sexual words [w]. The medial temporal lobe sits very close to the amygdala, which is our primitive 'emotional' nucleus that mediates emotional reactions and modulates emotional memories. Ramachandran conducted the study because he had observed a strong correlation between TLE and obsessive religious convictions.

Of course, this is not to say that all who hold strong religious convictions are suffering temporal lobe epilepsy or taking hallucinogens. Ramachandran's research merely points to a possible mechanism for the observation that a higher percentage of those with TLE than of the population at large are hyper-religious. It is to say that humans both seek to comprehend patterns and are emotional beings. In the absence of knowledge to explain phenomena in the natural world, it is scarcely surprising that our various ancestors invented mythologies.

That humans have continued to cling to religious beliefs despite vast advances in understanding of natural phenomena merely underlines the emotionality that humans invest in magic-thinking. At least we have stopped blood sacrifices to make the sun continue to shine and no longer believe that horse-drawn chariots drag the sun across the sky!

Quo Vadis?
...section index...

One Evolution, Many Creationisms

Like so much else connected to invented religious belief, creationism comes in a variety of guises in which invented beliefs range from the sublimely ridiculous (flat earthers, geocentrists, and YEC), through the pretentious (intelligent [sick] design theory). The variety of religious and creationist beliefs is directly attributable to the contrived, invented nature of all religious beliefs, none of which comprises an internally consistent logical system based on evidence.

Typically, creationists are theists who cling to religious views with varying levels of dogmatism whilst ignorantly choosing to deny or distort most or part of scientific knowledge. Such ignorance is religiously motivated, substituting varying levels of Biblical literalism and insistence on Special Creation for scientific fact.

At the most realistic, scientific end of this spectrum comes philosophical materialism. The following list is from TalkOrigins:

CREATION
Flat Earthers
Geocentrists
Young Earth Creationists
... (Omphalos)
Old Earth Creationists
...(Gap Creationism)
...(Day-Age Creationism)
...(Progressive Creationism)
...(Intelligent Design Creationism)
Evolutionary Creationists
Theistic Evolutionists
Methodological Materialistic Evolutionists
Philosophical Materialistic Evolutionists
EVOLUTION

Evolutionary science is complex because it includes information from so many areas of science. However, the fact of biological evolution is acknowledged by the majority of scientists and denied only by religiously-biased individuals, most of who are not qualified in the relevant areas.

Quo Vadis?
...section index...

Statistics on Stupidity

The following are snippets from the latest Gallup Poll on ignorant beliefs rampant in the US:

"The majority of Republicans in the United States do not believe the theory of evolution is true and do not believe that humans evolved over millions of years from less advanced forms of life."

"Those who attend church frequently are much less likely to believe in evolution than are those who seldom or never attend. That Republicans tend to be frequent churchgoers helps explain their doubts about evolution."

(I knew that there was a reason why I have disliked more Republicans than I have disliked Democrats!)

"The data indicate some seeming confusion on the part of Americans on this issue. About a quarter of Americans say they believe both in evolution's explanation that humans evolved over millions of years and in the creationist explanation that humans were created as is about 10,000 years ago."

No surprise that holders of silly ideas can't even get their ignorance straight!

This dismaying display of ignorance revealed to pollsters is demonstration that the majority of Americans can be wrong, and that the majority of regular Church attendees are indeed wrong.

Quo Vadis?
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Popper

Karl Popper was a philosopher of science who is best known for his extension of David Hume's 'problem of induction' and for his work on the demarcation of science.

Popper argued that observation is selective and theory-laden and that there can be no pure or theory-free observations. He further argued that it is possible to select amongst observable data in such a way as to support personally favoured yet invalid theories.

(So-called creation 'science' and intelligent [sick] design theory are not science, and provide clear examples of the misinterpretation and misrepresentation of facts to fit a prior insistence on the existence of a creator. Here, I use prior to indicate that belief in a creator comes prior to the manipulation of the data to support the belief. Creation myths are the invention of humans in almost every culture and are initially invented because of a psychological need for an a posteriori explanation of the natural world. Continuation of such creation mythologies are ensured by post-invention indoctrination.)

Regarding Karl Popper on the topic of the demarcation of science from non-science:
"Formally, then, Popper's theory of demarcation may be articulated as follows: where a ‘basic statement’ is to be understood as a particular observation-report, then we may say that a theory is scientific if and only if it divides the class of basic statements into the following two non-empty sub-classes: (a) the class of all those basic statements with which it is inconsistent, or which it prohibits — this is the class of its potential falsifiers (i.e., those statements which, if true, falsify the whole theory), and (b) the class of those basic statements with which it is consistent, or which it permits (i.e., those statements which, if true, corroborate it, or bear it out)."
Thornton, Stephen, "Karl Popper", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2006 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL

Quo Vadis?
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