Fruits and vegetables

What is the fascination creationists have for the produce aisle?

First we had Ray Comfort claiming that bananas were "the atheists' worst nightmare" because we for some reason were supposedly befuddled by the fact that bananas are "perfectly shaped to fit into the human hand" and had a "non-slip surface," so they must have been created that way by an intelligent deity.  After Comfort was subjected to ridicule on social media at a level that would induce most of us to change our names and have our faces surgically altered before being willing to go out into public again -- I'll leave it to your imagination as to what other objects people informed Comfort were "perfectly shaped to fit into the human hand" -- you'd think the creationists would say, "Okay, maybe that's not the best argument we have."

But no.  Creationists, as a whole, seem to think that if at first you fail miserably, you don't just try try again, you beat the idea unto death with a blunt instrument.  And no one is better at that strategy than Kent Hovind, who is famous not only for specious arguments for young-Earth creationism but for spending ten years in federal prison for tax evasion.

Hovind seems to think that the way to support Ray Comfort's argument is to find other fruits and vegetables that are "the atheists' worst nightmare."  First, we had lettuce:

How could lettuce evolve slowly by chance and from what?  How many trillions of intermediate steps would there have to be to go from a dot of nothing to a living lettuce plant?  Is there any scientific evidence besides lines on paper?

Yes, there is.  Thanks for asking.

Then there were grapes:

How could a grapevine… evolve slowly by chance and from what?  Wait till you see what they teach on the internet that the grapes evolve from.  You won’t believe it… 

How could it happen by chance and from what?  How many trillions of intermediate steps would there have to be to turn a dot of nothing into a grape?  Isn’t that what they teach?

No, it isn't.  Thanks for asking.

Because that was such a wildly successful line of reasoning, Hovind turned to celery:

How could celery have evolved slowly by chance, and from what?…  I would like some hard scientific evidence.  What is the ancestor of celery if it wasn’t celery?  What was it?  And if it was something other than celery, please tell me how it changed. 

How many trillions of intermediate steps would there have to be to go from an amoeba to celery?  I would say it would take a lot.  I would like to see what’s the evidence is for that…

That is going to be problematic, because celery didn't evolve from amoebas.  But once again, thanks for asking.

So what about... broccoli?

Broccoli.  How could broccoli have evolved slowly by chance?  I would like an answer to that.  A very simple answer.  How many trillions of intermediate steps would there have to be to change from an amoeba... to broccoli?  Is there any scientific evidence for these supposed changes that you guys believe in — capital B, believe? 

Evolution is a religion.  Is it more logical to believe that maybe broccoli was created by a really smart Creator?

Hovind seems to like amoebas almost as much as fruits and vegetables.  Maybe he doesn't know about any other life forms, so that's why he keeps coming back to those.

To wit, last week's installment, wherein we hear about oranges.  And you'll never guess what his argument is:

You think all those oranges, and those trees that are producing it, and the dirt that’s holding it all came from a dot of nothing that exploded 13.7 billion years ago?  Whodathunkit.  That’s a new word I made up. 

How many trillions of intermediate steps would there have to be to go from a dot of nothing to an orange tree, and where is the evidence?  Is there any scientific evidence for all these supposed changes you guys talk about?…  Could it be more logical to believe, maybe, the orange tree was created by a really smart Creator?…  That’s the most logical conclusion.

 Of course, what all this boils down to is the argument from ignorance; "I can't imagine how this could happen" = "this didn't happen."  Evolutionary biologists and geneticists have a very good idea about how all of these organisms evolved (in most of these examples, with significant help from artificial selection by humans), and Hovind is only claiming this because he hasn't bothered to read any of the scientific papers explaining in great detail the answers to all of these questions.

[Image is in the Public Domain]

And I swear, if I hear one more time that the Big Bang Model says that "a dot of nothing exploded and made everything," I'm going to punch a wall.  For fuck's sake, if you're going to blather on about something, at least read the Wikipedia article first, if more technical treatments are above your head.  If you can't be bothered to do at least that much, allow me to direct you to the definition of "straw man argument."

Oh, and Kent?  You did not make up "whodathunkit."  I can remember my dad saying that back in the mid-1970s when I was in high school.  But given your determination to misrepresent and play fast and loose with scientific claims (not to mention your IRS return), I don't suppose there's any reason to expect you'd be more honest about other stuff.

But you have to wonder where he's going to go now.  Artichokes?  Mangoes?  Okra?  Pomegranates?  Bok choi?  The possibilities are endless.  It'd be nice, though, if he could change the rest of the argument, because it's getting tiresome to read, "So, consider _____.  Could that have come from a dot of nothing 13.7 billion years ago?  What's the evidence?" etc. etc. etc.  He's rung the changes on this one enough, don't you think?

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This week's Skeptophilia book recommendation is a classic: Richard Dawkins's The Blind Watchmaker.  This book is, in my opinion, the most lucid and readable exposition of the evolutionary model ever written, and along the way takes down the arguments for Intelligent Design a piece at a time.  I realize Dawkins is a controversial figure, given his no-quarter-given approach to religious claims, but even if you don't accept the scientific model yourself, you owe it to yourself to see what the evolutionary biologists are actually saying.

[If you purchase the book from Amazon using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to supporting Skeptophilia!]

There goes the Sun

Yesterday I received a friendly email from a loyal reader of Skeptophilia of the "You think that is stupid, wait till you see this" variety.  As well-intentioned as these generally are, I always hesitate to read further, because my general impression of human foolishness and gullibility really doesn't need any further reinforcement.

This one was in response to last week's post about the Flat Earthers, so already we've set the bar for comparative idiocy pretty high.  But as I continued to read the email (yes, I succumbed to my 'satiable curiosity), I found that said bar was cleared in a single leap by this particular claim.

So without further ado: the idea that makes the Flat Earthers look sane and sensible.  Ready?

The Sun doesn't exist.

According to a group of loons calling themselves "asunists," what we're calling the Sun is just an illusion generated by light collected and beamed at the Earth by an array of curved mirrors.  You might be asking, "Light coming from where, exactly?", but that is only the first of the many problems we encounter upon delving into the situation.  Apparently the idea came about when someone googled "solar simulator" and found that there is a device that approximates the radiation spectrum and illuminance of the Sun, and is used for testing solar cells, sunscreen, plastics, and so forth.  So in a classic case of adding two and two and getting 147, they then interpreted this to mean that the Sun itself was a simulation.

[image courtesy of NASA]

Who is responsible for this?  Well, nasty old NASA, of course.  Same ones who keep the Moon hologram going and are suppressing information about the Earth being flat and/or hollow, not to mention the impending catastrophic visit by the fabled planet Nibiru.

What evidence do we have?  The producer of the above-linked YouTube video explains how he knows that the Sun isn't real, and a lot of it seems to be the fact that in some photographs, the outline of the Sun is "fuzzy."  It used to be clear and sharp, but now because of "chemicals in the air" the Sun has gotten all blurred.  So apparently we used to have a real Sun, but now it's been replaced by a simulator which just isn't as good as the real thing.

My question is -- well, among my many questions is -- don't you think someone would have noticed when the real Sun was taken down, and the simulator put in place?  Oh, and what did they do with the old Sun?  Was it sent to the stellar retirement home?  Was it just turned out into the cold vacuum of space, to wander, lost and forlorn forever?

Of course, the question that applies to all of these wacko conspiracy theories is why anyone would bother to do all of this.  Don't you think that if the Sun really was a big bunch of mirrors, the Earth was flat, or whatnot, the scientists at NASA would tell us?  What could they possibly gain by pretending that the Sun exists and the Earth is an oblate spheroid?

The oddly hilarious postscript to all of this is that the whole the-Sun-doesn't-exist conspiracy theory received a boost from none other than Ray "Mr. Banana" Comfort, the outspoken young-earth creationist who a couple of years ago got his ass handed to him when he showed up to distribute creationist literature at a talk by Richard Dawkins hosted by the Skeptic Society.  Well, Comfort has picked up on the "asunist" thing and used it as an argument against atheism (in Comfort's mind, everything is an argument against atheism).  He tells us about his perception of the "asunists" -- mischaracterizing their claim as stating that they believe we're actually in the dark -- and compares that to atheists' conclusion that god doesn't exist.

Which just shows you that there is no idea so completely stupid that you can't alter it so as to make it way stupider.

So to the loyal reader who sent me the email, all I can say is "thanks."  I now am even more convinced that Idiocracy was a non-fiction documentary.  It's time to get myself a cup of coffee and try to reboot my brain so that I make some degree of sense in class today.  Also time to start watching for the sunrise.

Or the solarsimulatorrise.  Or whatever.

It's all in the wrist

As the science has become more sophisticated, the creationists have had to resort to their own sort of sophistication to fight it.  Witness (if you don't mind doing repeated headdesks) Answers in Genesis's recent "paper," "On the Origin of Human Mitochondrial DNA Differences, New Generation Time Data Both Suggest a Unified Young-Earth Creation Model and Challenge the Evolutionary Out-of-Africa Model."  (If you would understandably prefer not to risk valuable brain cells, and also give AIG further hits on their hit tracker, the gist is that if you pick and choose, you can use mtDNA data to show that some human haplogroups can be traced back to a common ancestor about 6,000 years ago.  Therefore Adam and Eve, apparently.  How they explain the fact that you can use the precisely same method to show that humans and chimpanzees shared a common ancestor between 6 and 7 million years ago, I have no idea.)

Likewise, as the evolutionists have become better at using media to give access to their information, the creationists have done the same.  So it's not surprising that the young-earth crowd has taken to splashy publicity blitzes to spread their message, like Ray "Mr. Banana" Comfort's dubious strategy of giving out his new book Fat Chance: Why Pigs Will Fly Before America Will Have an Atheist President along with Subway gift cards at Reason Rally 2016, costing him $25,000.

Myself, I have no problem with this.  Can you imagine what will happen when Comfort and his crew hand out his book and the gift cards at an event where 99% of the attendees are secular rationalists?  My guess is that they'll accept, chuck the book, and go get a nice foot-long sub with the works at Ray's expense.

Equally sketchy is an order by an evangelical group for over a hundred thousand silicone wristbands that say "DEBUNK EVOLUTION" in large unfriendly letters.  The owner of Rapid Wristbands, Fiyyaz Pirani, couldn't refuse; for one thing, it was a hefty order and represented a lot of money to his company.  For another, he didn't want to do the same thing that the Christian cake bakers did, which is to refuse to serve someone on ideological grounds.

So what did he do?

He accepted the order, and when the fundamentalist ministry who ordered the wristbands paid up, he donated the whole shebang (an amount of over $4,000) to the National Center for Science Education.

"I’m thrilled to donate to a cause I really believe in," Pirani said.  "NCSE has labored for years to keep creationism out of the public schools, and I’m pleased that my company’s donation will help it continue its valuable work."

So I only have one thing to say to the ministry that ordered the wristbands:

As marketing strategy backfires go, this ranks right up there with Mitsubishi's decision to name their car model the "Pajero," neglecting the fact that "Pajero" means "wanker" in Spanish.

As far as NCSE goes, they (of course) happily accepted the donation, and were far more mature than I would have been had I been their spokesperson.  Explaining, probably, why I will never be their spokesperson.  "We admire RapidWristband.com’s way of responding to unwelcome orders," said Ann Reid, NCSE’s executive director.  "It’s more ethical than refusing to fulfill them—and more constructive."

Not to mention about a thousand times more hilarious.

So that's our news for today from the folks who (in Sam Harris's trenchant words) believe that the Earth was created a thousand years after the Sumerians invented glue.  Myself, I love it when things work out this way.  Poetic justice is always a better option than getting combative.  Not only is it more effective, it stings a hell of a lot worse.

Saying no to Noah

There are times when I want to tell people, "Stop.  You are making it way too easy for me."

I would almost like it better if the loonies had stronger arguments, you know?  Make me work for my posts.  Stop me in my tracks with some actual logic or evidence.

Sadly, that rarely happens.  I won't say "never;" I have more than once posted retractions or corrections.  And I live in hopes that the wingnuts will eventually start adopting the scientific method as their modus operandi.

But I don't see it happening any time soon.  Instead, we still have daily examples of what my father used to call "shooting fish in a barrel."

The latest example of fish-shooting has to do with the reactions to the soon-to-be-released Darren Aronofsky biblical epic Noah, starring Russell Crowe and Emma Watson.  (Watch a trailer here.)  The movie is due in theaters on March 26.

 [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

You would think that the staunch Christians would be tickled pink that Hollywood is putting a biblical story on the Big Screen -- they certainly loved the gruesome Passion of the Christ, not to mention classics like The Greatest Story Ever Told and The Ten Commandments.

But no.  The site Christian News published an article called "New 'Noah' Film Starring Russell Crowe Flooded With Controversy," which described the reactions of Christians who have been allowed to pre-screen the movie.  "Earlier reports of the film expressed disapproval that Noah was depicted as being centered on an environmental agenda, and that Aronofsky viewed Noah as the 'first environmentalist,'" author Heather Clark writes, implying that Christianity and environmentalism are somehow antithetical.  "Noah is also stated to be tormented with guilt for surviving the flood while others perished."

Well, yeah.  I'd guess he would be.  But it only gets weirder from there.  Angie Meyer-Olszewski, an entertainment publicist, was interviewed by Fox411 and said, "You can’t stray from the Bible in a Bible-based film without upsetting a percentage of the Christian faith base.  Interpretations may vary, but if the story changes, even a little, it’s deemed offensive.  When a studio releases a movie that’s biblical, they are playing a game of religious roulette."

But no one had a stranger, or more bizarrely ironic, reaction than our old pal Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis.  In an interview with Newsmax, Ham said, "In the movie, it seems Noah is a far cry from the Noah of the Bible.  He's angry, even crazy.  It makes a mockery of Noah's righteous nature and is actually anti-biblical...  Noah was a preacher of righteousness, (but) this just isn't the case in Hollywood's version.  He's a delusional, conflicted man, more concerned about the environment, animals, and even killing his own grandchild than he is with his family and his relationship with God."

Ham then went on to say, in a quote that I swear I'm not making up, "Sure, after watching the film, people could be directed to read the true story for themselves in the Bible.  But in this day and age, young people have a hard time deciphering reality from fiction and don't often take the time to form their own educated opinions."

*irony overload*

The last quote prompted atheist blogger Hemant Mehta to say, "He didn't really just say that... did he?"

Then noted evangelical wackmobile Ray Comfort weighed in, because things weren't surreal enough.  "I wouldn't encourage a soul to pay Hollywood to make any movie that undermines the credibility of the Bible, and this one certainly does," Comfort said.  "Do it right -- according to the script in the Scriptures -- and we will support it in the millions, as we did with Ben-Hur."

Ah, yes.  I do remember the famous chariot race scene from the Gospel of Luke, don't you?

And if this weren't enough, we now have word that the movie is being banned in Muslim countries, thus far Qatar, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates, with Jordan, Kuwait, and Egypt expected to follow suit.   The reason -- it is an insult to depict any of Allah's prophets (of which Noah is considered one), and the movie "contradicts the stature of prophets and messengers... and antagonizes the faithful."

Well then.  This just shows, once again, the truth of the South African proverb, that there are forty different kinds of lunacy, but only one kind of common sense.  I mean, really; do they expect that a movie is going to follow the "script in the Scriptures" to the letter?  If it did, it would be, what, fifteen minutes long?  And have no character development or, frankly, plot.  But there you have it; I guess you can't please everyone.  And it's not like it's the only biblical epic you have to choose from, if that sort of thing floats your, um, ark.  The Jesus's-life movie Son of God is already in the theaters, and seems to be generating better responses from the faithful, for what it's worth.

As far as director Aronofsky's feelings about the controversy surrounding Noah, the media depicts him as upset by it, but I honestly doubt he is.  The kerfuffle over the movie's biblical accuracy, and whether it should be viewed by the devout, is keeping it in the media -- which is exactly where Aronofsky wants it to be.  I predict it'll be a roaring success, at least for the first few weeks.  Irish poet Brendan Behan said it best: "There is no such thing as bad publicity."