Category: Religion

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EE #4, The Good the Bad and the Crazy

First we have The Good, a very rational tolerant engineer, the kind that makes me proud of my profession rather than embarrassed to admit it.

Some people believe that at the end of the ride it’s, whew, that was fun, can’t wait to get in line and do it all again.

Some people believe that our little fun park is a frivolous waste of time and that the real good stuff happens after the amusement park closes.  I would say, what a waste, but it’s their choice to make.

Here I tread lightly, but I’m sure you know exactly what I mean.  We could debate in a friendly way how each of us has decided to make our lives better, and learn some things along the way.  That’s a Good Thing(tm).  No, it is the other stuff that worries me.  And not in a paranoid way, but in a very real and “fear for my life” way.  This one wants to cut off my head because I don’t believe in flying horses, and that one wants to beat me to death over a disagreement about a cracker.

I would like to believe that no one on this list would wish me harm for anything I’ve said, and if someone did, they wouldn’t dare say it publicly.

On the other hand, there are too many places in this world (including the southern state where I grew up) where if I said, “Sorry, I don’t happen to believe your fairy tales to be literally true”, then I would fear for my safety and my life.

Hey, I see a Pharyngula great cracker incident ’08 reference in there, an engineer who reads PZ is always a good sign. Of course one of the embarrassing engineers had to reply with The Bad:

But if that is so, why would you say something like that? I guess I see the point (or a point): it should be possible to say what you want, to disagree how much you want, without fear. But that’s one of the conditions here: nothing is perfect 🙂  So we have to accept that things we say have consequences, and they are not always easy to predict.

Wow, he thinks it’s to be expected that people will hurt or kill you over ideas and that’s acceptable. I know he is not from the US but I think even in Germany and Brazil it’s against the law to cause physical harm to others and killing over words is murder. He does not grasp the concept of freedom of conscience but I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised. His previous posts have shown me he doesn’t grasp the fundamentals of science or critical thinking either.

Next I bring you The Crazy:

Can’t help on sci journals, but I did wire plants up to bio-feedback circuitry & got some fascinating experimental results…

The device was a wheatstone bridge detecting changes of resistance from electrodes attached to stems of Foxgloves & houseplants.  Output created a rising needle & rising audio pitch if resistance rose, & the converse if resistance reduced..

With Foxglove, once the needle stabilised I tried talking to it, no difference or a small fall.  Tried torturing a leaf, slight rise.  Then a motor cycle passed by noisily, & the needle & pitch shot up, then slowly went down again. Then a gust of wind blew, & the needle fell.

With a houseplant wired, I tried talking to it, small fall.  I tried torturing a leaf, barely discernable rise that quickly fell.  Then I asked a colleague to have a go.  He wasn’t interested but with cajoling he turned & looked at the plant -from 15 feet distance the plant screamed!  Needle & pitch went off the scale & I had to turn down sensitivity & readjust.  He thought I was taking the piss.

I gave it a few minutes, there was a small fall, stabilised, then I stepped away & asked Phil again to try.  Once again from several yards away he simply looked at the plant, & the plant’s resistance shot up & a scream came from the loudspeaker.  This time there was no fakery possible from me – I too was several yards away.

I make no attempt to publish ‘findings’, & instead invite that others also experiment…

Typical pseudo-scientist, won’t document or publish any of his alleged results so that others can try and replicate his experiment. Instead he simply insists it works and tries to get others to start from scratch. When you see this crap you just have to call it for what it is, Bulls Hit!

A Good reply to some more Crazy:

And sometimes we progress by going back to old ways.
Medicine comes to mind.  We used to think using leeches was crazy stuff from older times.
Now we’ve found them quite useful.

That’s true, but not quite.

Why they were using them in the middles ages is different to why they’re used now.  You could say we found a new use for something that was supposed to be useful but wasn’t.  (You might need to take a deep breathe first.)

An engineer who has appeared here before, showing a Bad grasp of reality (emphasis mine):

It comes as no surprise that the majority of people will trust CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN, FOX News, NPR, NY Times and Washington Post as though they publish truth.  But they all publish the same story, the same way from the same source and it is always flavored with a left political bias.

Wow what planet is he living on, I have lots of problems with FOX News but a liberal/left bias sure as heck isn’t one of them. In the past year this guy, as far as I can recall, hasn’t gotten one technical detail correct and evades owning up to the errors when called on them. Thankfully the list is inhabited by many excellent engineers so, his technical mistakes are always corrected. I thought this guy was just a classic BS artist, you know the type who pretends to be knowledgeable and can talk his way out of trouble when he’s caught having no knowledge. Now that I’ve seen his utter failure to grasp reality twice I’m beginning to think he’s just nuts.

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From Around The Net

I’m too busy for regular blogging so here’s some stuff that caught my eye in blogs I regularly read.

UN doesn’t believe there should be freedom of speech, and all this time I thought they were advocates for human rights. I like much of what the UN has done over the decades but this is ridiculous. Hyphoid Logic: “Blaspheme” While You Still Can & The Bronze Blog: F@#* This S*#@!

Nisbet’s political correctness is outrageous, denialism blog : Cranks cry persecution, Nisbet listens.

NCCAM should be abolished, why are we wasting money on this crap? denialism blog : NCCAM: the not-even-wrong agency

The 100th Meeting of the Skeptics’ Circle, Respectful Insolence: The trouble with Orac

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Missionary Marines in Fallujah

This is disgusting and illegal by military law, the invasion of Iraq is not supposed to be the new Crusades.

Now residents of the city are abuzz that some Americans whom they consider occupiers are also acting as Christian missionaries. Residents said some Marines at the western entrance to their city have been passing out the coins for two days in what they call a “humiliating” attempt to convert them to Christianity.

…

“Multi-National Force-Iraq is investigating a report that U.S. military personnel in Fallujah handed-out material that is religious and evangelical in nature,” the spokesman, Rear Adm. Patrick Driscoll, said in a statement e-mailed to McClatchy. “Local commanders are investigating since the military prohibits proselytizing any religion, faith or practices.”

Hopefully they’ll severely punish those responsible for the atrocious action. Read the full story here:

McClatchy Washington Bureau – Iraqis claim Marines are pushing Christianity in Fallujah

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LOL Florida

Everyone have a good laugh out loud at Land O’ Lakes Florida because a substitute teacher at the Charles S. Rushe Middle School was fired for wizardry. This is pure insanity most likely inspired by religious fundamentalism (IMO, religious fundamentalism is a mental health problem).

Substitute Teacher Says Wizardry Accusation Cost Him Job

The trick requires a toothpick and transparent tape. A sleight-of-hand maneuver causes the toothpick to disappear then reappear. At least, so it seems. In reality, the toothpick hides behind the performer’s thumb, held in place by the tape.

“The whole thing lasted 45 seconds,” Piculas said.

He said the students liked the trick. He showed them how to do it so they could perform it at home.
One student in the Rushe Middle class apparently took the trick the wrong way, Piculas said. He said he was told the student became so traumatized that the student’s father complained.

Traumatized by a magic trick! This child and its parents are in need of urgent psychological treatment perhaps a long stay at a mental health facility for their extreme fantasy prone personalities. I’d guess they fall for the magic tricks some fundamentalist/evangelical preachers use to convince people of their faith healing and other scams to gain followers and make money.

LOL Florida citizens repeat after me, there is no real magic, they are just tricks for entertainment or scams to get your worship and/or money.

See also:
Magic trick costs teacher job
Wizardry In The Classroom
Back to Blogging: “Wizard” fired from teaching gig in Florida.
Why Harry Potter will never teach in Florida
Hexpelled: No Wizarding Allowed
I can’t believe in Florida anymore

Tip of the wizard hat to PZ Myers for pointing out the story and to Christopher Petroni at Allusions of Grandeur for pointing out that the abbreviation of Land O’ Lakes is LOL.

Updates to this article are here and here.

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Expelled reactions

Randy Olson, creator of the excellent documentary film Flock of Dodos, has weighed in with a post and a lively debate in the comments, Meet Ben Stein, the New Spokesman for the Field of Evolution. I was particularly impressed with JuliaL’s comment in that thread.

Extremely effective as propaganda.

I went to see the movie this weekend because I can’t expect to have any credibility in discussing it with my church friends if I haven’t seen it.

I’m comfortable with the context of witty debate, and, viewed as part of that context, Myers and Dawkins were clever and surprisingly mild-mannered.

I’m also familiar with the context of conservative Christian conversations about religion, and in that context, Myers and Dawkins look cold, callous, arrogant, and hateful.

Myers takes something that the audience treasures as the most valuable element of their lives, the source of comfort in pain and tragedy, the source of the ethical and social systems they live by, and compares it to a trivial hobby (accompanied by ad by an old clip of an ugly, foolish-looking woman knitting). The very off-handedness of his comment reads as a powerful insult. The method by which one is dealing with the death of a child, the way in which one makes life-altering decisions, all a trivial hobby? That doesn’t come across so much as a put-down of religion as a dismissing of the pain, hopes, and lives of the people themselves.

…

As a Christian who is entirely comfortable with the scientific Theory of Evolution, I hope that very few of my fellow church members see this movie because I think its effect may be hard to counteract. I’m sorry to see today so much scienceblog discussion focused on money – for the fundamentalists, this is an investment in missions, not a source of income – and so much less focused on what a powerful tool this movie is for turning a religious person who has known and cared little about the evolution/ID struggle in public schools into a determined advocate for ID.

Sadly I think she’s correct about the reactions to the film by conservative/fundamentalist Christians, I recommend you read the whole comment. 

Michael Shermer received a letter demonstrating some of the harm Expelled is doing by spreading lies. Richard Dawkins wrote a wonderful reply, ‘Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein’s lying propaganda’

A young Christian wrote an interesting post, Expelled, or Why I Won’t Be Seeing It.

Blake Stacey has put together a list of people actually harmed in the evolution/creationism wars in his post, Creation, Power and Violence.

Scientific American has many articles about Expelled, here are two to get you started. Ben Stein Launches a Science-free Attack on Darwin and Six Things in Expelled That Ben Stein Doesn’t Want You to Know.

Peter Manseau wrote a review for Science & Spirit magazine, Is I.D. Ready for Its Close-up?

Blue Collar Scientist has quotes and links for Some Expelled Reviews.

Skeptico comments on Ben Stein’s appearance on the Craig Ferguson show, What’s Ben Stein Smoking? Seriously, has Ben lost all his brain, expecting evolution to explain things in other unrelated fields of science, WTF!

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Good stuff from the blogs I read and an admin note

First the administration note, do to blog spam driving me nuts I’ve decided to close the comments on old posts that attract blog spam. If you encounter an older post with closed comments that you would like to contribute to, send me an email using the address that is at the end of every page at my main site. Assuming your contribution is relevant I’ll manually add it to the comments of the post for you. If it’s irrelevant I’ll reply explaining why I am not posting the comment.

Now for the good reads from the blogs I read:

Blake has posted an excellent round-up of the real discrimination going on in the ridiculous ID/Creationism vs. Science non-debate. Science After Sunclipse » Creation, Power and Violence

I mentioned it in previous post but now the NCSE has fully launched their Expelled Exposed web site. Check it out for the excellent information on the topic.

Bob’s post this week is a must read for anyone involved in hiring IT consultants, The Truth About IT Consultants.

Via Mark from the Denialism blog I wound up at this three part series, Contrary imaginations. – By Daniel Engber – Slate Magazine.

And last but not least, Tim’s post Scientists 2, Teens 0, Journalists -2, points out the two silly reports this week trying to make it seem like kids are smarter than adult scientists. Please people, join the reality based community and keep your rational thought processes in place. Contrary to what TV wants you to believe, it is extremely rare for a child to make a useful contribution to the advancement of knowledge. In fact other than Emily Rosa I can’t think of a single case and her contribution was not a giant breakthrough on a complex topic just a bright child pointing out that some of adults are too easily falling for magic tricks and thinking they are real.

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Expelled Exposed

A movie is opening on the 18th that in my opinion is a propaganda documentary of the worst sort. I think the movie’s intent is to mislead the public by misrepresenting science and scientists in the hopes of getting a particular set of religious teachings forced on students via public school science classes.

The National Center for Science Education has started a new web site, Expelled Exposed, to help people:

Learn more about the anti-evolution movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, featuring Ben Stein.

The NCSE is doing a great job of collecting links to news and reviews about the movie. Be sure to re-visit the site as they are updating it frequently when new information is available.