Carnival of the Godless #78 is up over at Greta Christina’s Blog.

I haven’t finished checking out all of the articles yet, but I want to draw your attention immediately to the very first one: “16 Techniques of Critical Thinking” over at Lukeprog. It’s one of the best posts I’ve read in a while. Critical thinking is one of the most important skills we can have in this confusing age we live in, yet it’s apparently one of the rarest skills, considering how many people believe in UFOs, astrology, homeopathy, chiropractic, Sylvia Browne, Uri Geller, and creationism.

Here’s the short version of his 16 techniques:

1. Clarify
2. Be accurate
3. Be precise
4. Be relevant
5. Know your purpose
6. Identify assumptions
7. Check your emotions
8. Empathize
9. Know your own ignorance
10. Be independent
11. Think through implications
12. Know your own biases
13. Suspend judgment
14. Consider the opposition
15. Recognize cultural assumptions
16. Be fair, not selfish

Go on over and read the whole article. It explains each of these points in detail. When you’re done with that, go check out the rest of the Carnival of the Godless.

I’ve been busy this week, so I missed the Earth’s birthday! A lot of other blogs reported this already. I still want to mention it here, because I’ve always been amused by the Ussher Chronology.

World Nut Daily reported yesterday that the Earth turned exactly 6010 years old on October 23rd. They know this, because some old fundie asshat figured this out over 350 years ago. And as we all know, the only information worth knowing was all written long ago, is infallible, and could never be updated with more accurate data.

You might remember James Ussher. He was a Bishop in the Anglican church. He lived from 1581 to 1656, so just about everything this guy thought he knew about the world is completely wrong.

Here’s something weird. According to Wikipedia, his title was “Archbishop of Armagh, Primate of All Ireland”. Fundies claim that we did not descend from apes, yet they call their own guy a primate!

Anyway, in 1650, Primate Ussher published his version of a history of the world. The Ussher Chronology, as it became known, was based in part on the Bible. Wikipedia says that he pegged the date of creation as “nightfall preceding 23 October 4004 BC.” Nightfall implies there was a day for the night to have fallen upon. Wouldn’t that make the date October 22?

I’m actually being overly harsh on the guy. It turns out that in those days, calculating the exact date of Earth’s creation was all the rage. John Lightfoot determined that the Earth was created in 3929 BC. Bede (That’s his whole name. He’s like Cher or Madonna—just another name-dropper.) calculated the Earth’s birth at 3952 BC. Finally, Joseph Justus Scaliger put the start date at 3949 BC.

This all seems silly today, but in those pre-science days in Europe, people did the best they could. With the extremely limited information they had back then, of course they’re going to veer wildly off course with some of their conclusions. You have to give Ussher credit for making an honest effort. In fact none other than Stephen Jay Gould had this to say:

I shall be defending Ussher’s chronology as an honorable effort for its time and arguing that our usual ridicule only records a lamentable small-mindedness based on mistaken use of present criteria to judge a distant and different past

Ussher represented the best of scholarship in his time. He was part of a substantial research tradition, a large community of intellectuals working toward a common goal under an accepted methodology…

OK, so that gets Ussher off the hook. But he wrote that thing 350+ years ago. By the time the 18th and 19th centuries rolled around, his Chronology had pretty much been rejected by anybody with a brain.

Enter the Brainless

The Ussher Chronology would just be an interesting footnote, if it weren’t for the fact that modern fundies will desperately cling to anything that supports their primitive beliefs, no matter how far back in time they have to go to find it.

Let’s take a look at the World Net Daily article announcing the Earth’s birthday:

How old is the world?

Most people would say: “Nobody knows.”

No, actually most people would say “Approximately 4.6 billion years”.

But the author of the book frequently described as the greatest history book ever written, said the world was created Oct. 23, 4004 B.C. — making it exactly 6,010 yesterday.

Notice that they say “frequently described”? That’s a cop-out. Who says this? How often is “frequently”? It’s a way of implying authority for their assertion without actually having any. This ploy is the domain of the factless. Fox News frequently employs this technique. (In fact, right now Fox News is saying that “Some people say that the San Diego wildfires were started by Al Qaeda!” They have no proof of that. They’re just throwing it out there to be dicks.)

The article continues:

In the 1650s, an Anglican bishop named James Ussher published his Annals of the World…. First published in Latin, it consisted of more than 1,600 pages.

The book, now published in English for the first time, is a favorite of homeschoolers…

Oh, then you know it’s accurate. These are the people who yanked their kids out of public schools, because they teach too much evil stuff like biology, paleontology, and non-white history.

…and those who take ancient history seriously.

I was going to make a snide remark here, but from what I can tell, the non-Biblical parts of Ussher’s Chronology apparently hold up fairly well. Wikipedia says:

Ussher’s account of historical events for which he had multiple sources other than the Bible is usually in close agreement with modern accounts….

As long as you aren’t stupid enough to believe anything it says about Biblical myths, it’s probably a worthy read.

It’s the history of the world from the Garden of Eden…

D’oh! I just told you not to believe what it says about Biblical myths!

Let’s jump to the next paragraph:

Of course, there will be those who disagree with Ussher’s calculations of time — especially evolutionists who need billions of years to explain their theory of how life sprang from non-life and mutated from one-celled animals into human beings.

That’s right. The whole reason “evolutionists” (I’m surprised they didn’t call them “Darwinists”) insist the world is billions of years old is because that’s how long evolution requires. There’s no evidence whatsoever for such an age. That’s just how long evolution would require if it were real. And of course it isn’t. Evolution is just Satan’s plot to turn people away from God.

BTW, “evolutionists” don’t claim that the first single-celled organisms were animals. Typical fundie propaganda. They don’t understand what they’re opposed to.

Here’s another fun fact about Ussher’s Chronology. According to that, the Earth is just over 6000 years old. Yet if you consult archaeologists, for example “Ask Dr. Dig”:

The first permanent farming settlements were established in the Middle East in approximately 8000 B.C.

Oops! It’s those pesky modern facts again! Everybody stop reading anything published after 1650!

The fundie “news” article continues:

Ussher’s arrival at the date of Oct. 23 was determined based on the fact that most peoples of antiquity, especially the Jews, started their calendar at harvest time. Ussher concluded there must be good reason for this, so he chose the first Sunday following autumnal equinox. [emphasis added]

The fundie nitwits get another fact wrong! He’s their boy, and they don’t even understand what he wrote! According to Wikipedia, Ussher chose the Sunday before the equinox!

World Nut Daily continues:

If you think this is a startling fact — an actual date for Creation — you haven’t seen anything until you’ve pored through the rest of Ussher’s Annals of the World.

If you’re beginning to think this sounds like an advertisement instead of a news article, you’re right. The rest of the article is just a sales pitch. Apparently the twits at World Nut Daily have no concept of journalistic ethics or the traditional firewall that separates the news and advertising divisions of a publishing company. Of course that would be assuming that WND actually published any news. They make Fox News look like the New York Times.

It’s a classic history book for those who believe in the Bible — and a compelling challenge for those who don’t.

No. It’s not a challenge at all — compelling or otherwise.

Considered not only a literary classic, but also an accurate reference….

There’s that vague, unsubstantiated language again. Who considers it? Experts? Historians? Scholars? The gap-toothed bubba who works at the Quik-E-Mart?

Let’s jump down a bit and look at some of the other great writing in this article:

Special features:

• Important literary work that has been inaccessible in book form for over 300 years
…
• Translated into modern English for the first time
…
• Entered college at age 13
…
• Buried in Westminster Abbey

What? This book entered college at age 13 and is now buried in Westminster Abbey?

I’m not making this up. I cut a few list items out for brevity, but that’s the actual list of this book’s special features! Again, the fundies demonstrate the clear, logical thinking that they’re so good at!

I’ll spare you the rest of the article. In the meantime, don’t forget to wish our Earth a happy 6010th!

A common question that many fundies can’t answer is “Where did Cain get his wife?” This question has an easy answer, at least if you listen to the folks over at Answers in Genesis. They have an overly-long article that addresses the issue.

Here’s the basic idea: Cain married his sister. That was perfectly OK in those days, because the law against it didn’t come along until the time of Moses.

What about the risk of genetic deformities caused by inbreeding? No worry! There were none! People back then were perfect. Problems didn’t crop up until Adam & Eve sinned by eating the apple. At that point, God punished them by sabotaging their DNA. That’s why the law against marrying your sister had to be implemented.

OK, I’ve got a bunch of problems with this whole concept, but let’s just accept this at face value for now and see where it leads.

Holy Smoke!

I came across an interesting article over at the Creationism Pages at HolySmoke.org.

This part of their site seems to be an archive of a bunch of articles and internet correspondences. Sadly, their link is dead, so I can’t find out any more.

The article that caught my eye is called “Noah’s Daughters?”. It articulates something that has been bothering me for a while. It’s a brief debate between a couple of folks named Robert Craft and Laurie Appleton. Robert Craft starts with:

Then let’s move to a harder problem — the limited gene pool. For any given gene, the population of the eight humans would contain only a maximum of 10 alleles — 2 each from the three son-in-laws and 2 each from Noah and his spouse. Since the daughter’s alleles would simply be subsets of those of Noah and his spouse, they add nothing to the gene pool.

Laurie Appleton replies:

Since I was NOT aware that Noah had any daughters, at least not on the Ark anyway, and neither did he have any sons-in laws there either then perhaps you should rephrase your question. The whole four women on the Ark might well have been NO relation to Noah at all, but from wholly different families.

That sounds like she’s already trying to weasel out, but Robert gives her the benefit of the doubt:

Fine, Laurie, I’ll play your game. Let’s say that all eight people on the Ark were unrelated. That means that each of them could have carried 2 different alleles for each gene or a total of 16 [2 x 8, Laurie] alleles for the entire population. Since the human genome encompasses up to 59 different alleles for some genes, FROM WHERE did the OTHER 43 alleles come?

You’ve got three choices:

1) There were more than 30 people on the Ark [and Scripture is fallible]

2) The Flood didn’t cover the entire world and at least 22 other humans survived [and Scripture is fallible]

3) 43 different alleles EVOLVED after the Food.

Pay yer money and take your choice, Laurie.

The web page does not record what, if anything, was her reply.

Final Question

In addition to the three problems above, I also want to know who the offspring of the Ark passengers married. Although it is true that the prohibition against marrying within the family would not come along until Moses, the flood story occurred after “The Fall”. The DNA was already defective by this point. Doesn’t that mean that everybody who believes the flood story is, by definition, the descendants of inbred hicks?

Fundies seem to think that everything needs protection (marriage, the flag, etc.) except the rights of people who aren’t like them. Their latest whine is about how much the Pledge of Allegiance needs safeguarding from the Liberal Homosexual Hollywood Ninth-Circuit Media French Agenda.

Some website calling itself RightMarch.com has a hyperventilating editorial called “Protect the Pledge of Allegiance! Demand Congress Pass the Pledge Protection Act!” It says:

ALERT: Patriotic hard-working Americans like you and I are fed up with the efforts by activist judges and extremist groups to remove the words “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance. As you are probably aware, self-avowed atheist Dr. Michael Newdow continues his crusade against the Pledge in the federal courts.

Don’t you love the way they underline key phrases to make sure you don’t miss them? Apparently they think you have the reading comprehension of a second-grader, so they have to highlight all of the key points. ALERT: We’re fed up with activist judges, extremist groups, and especially those evil atheists! All we want to do is protect the Pledge of Allegiance ! ! ! ! ! ! !

(By the way, it should say “you and me”, not “you and I”. Literacy is not a requirement to be a fundie.)

Arguing that it’s “unconstitutional” to recite the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools, Newdow actually won his case before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in 2002.

Notice that they put “unconstitutional” in scare quotes, as if the concept is so far-fetched that only a court as divorced from reality as the Ninth Circuit could rule that way. In actuality, the Ninth Circuit is often the only court that still understands and upholds the Constitution.

The U.S. Supreme Court eventually dismissed the case, but only due to a “technicality” — since Newdow didn’t actually have custody of his daughter, the Court ruled that he lacked standing to bring suit in the case.

Wow, no underlines! They did put “technicality” in scare quotes to remind you that it’s only by the grace of Almighty God that we dodged this bullet the first time around.

Newdow vowed to sue again — and true to his word, in January 2005, he filed another suit…

Oh no! Not another suit! What an evil, evil man!

…this time with eight other families having custody of their children. It’s clear that until Congress acts decisively, the right of children to voice their allegiance to our Republic “under God” will be jeopardized by fringe groups and activist judges.

It’s our worst nightmare! Our eternal foes, the Activist Judges, have now teamed up with Fringe Groups!

Actually, I seriously doubt that many kids are worried about their “right” to pledge allegiance to God. Most kids only have the vaguest notion of what the Pledge is even about. And even if they did want to swear a loyalty oath to God, nobody is preventing them from doing so on their own time.

In response, Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO) has once again introduced the “Pledge Protection Act” (H.R. 699), which removes the issue of the Pledge’s constitutionality from the jurisdiction of federal courts.

First of all, notice that it’s a Republican congressman from the Bible Belt who wants to foist this bad legislation on the rest of us. Secondly, this seems like an unconstitutional power grab by the Legislative branch. They know that their precious religious ritual is a violation of the First Amendment, so they’re trying to prevent the courts from ever hearing the matter. How can a law like this be constitutional? I’m guessing that it isn’t, but their plan is to add this as an additional barrier. It will take so long for this law to be challenged and thrown out that they’ll have time to dream up some other crazy idea to “protect” the Pledge from judicial oversight.

The Pledge Protection Act contains the same language that passed on the floor of the House in August 2006 by a vote of 260-167.

Which tells us that 61% of Congress doesn’t understand or respect the Constitution.

An overwhelming majority of Americans believe that schools should be allowed to use the Pledge…

Civil rights aren’t a popularity contest. If they were, we wouldn’t need a Bill of Rights in the first place. The purpose of the Constitution is to protect the minority from the majority.

…regardless of whatever mistaken rulings the wacky left-wing Ninth Circuit (or other federal courts) might be tempted to issue.

The people writing this screed have contempt not only for the “wacky left-wing” Ninth Circuit, but for the entire federal court system! Why don’t they just come right out and admit that they’d like to do away with the whole system? Just let Congress pass whatever laws they want without any oversight.

Like judges, every Member of Congress takes an oath to defend the Constitution upon taking office. By definition, that oath includes a commitment to act when the courts exceed their constitutional mandate.

But that oath doesn’t extend to passing unconstitutional laws! And how is a court determining whether something violates the Establishment Clause exceeding its authority?

In other words, Members of Congress must STAND UP and use constitutional means to rein in judges who try to legislate from the federal bench.

Wait. Do they want Congress to use constitutional means, or do they want them to pass this bill?