I don’t have time for a real post today, so I thought I’d steal something from elsewhere. I was reading the comments to the Bad Astronomy article on the 50th anniversary of the Explorer 1 satellite. Phil battles purveyors of crackpot ideas all the time, but especially those about space (killer asteroids, moon hoaxers, etc.). A reader named Kate speculated on the similarity in thinking between space crackpots and fundies:

It seems that the groups mentioned above have a hard time understanding that science is a process and not a doctrine, belief or “text”. Science is a tool you use to find out about the world around you and it is an ongoing process.

Why is it so difficult to understand that refinements in technology and the greater knowledge we gather with these refinements will, over time, expand our understanding of the universe and that old theories may, at times, fall by the wayside, but that our understanding of the fundamental processes that define the basis of scientific knowledge are strengthened by this “weeding out” process?

What I found interesting was the reply of a reader named Pat. He believes that these people need a structured world, whether that is imposed by religion or aliens:

It is the only kind of worldview some people understand, particularly those with control issues. They need a firm etiology, and since science can’t provide one they either adopt one or create one. It’s the very fluidity of scientific explanation that makes it unpalatable. It is much more comforting to say “X knows” or “I know” rather than “we don’t know.”

Attributing purpose and cause is a normal human response: it’s how we learn correct social behavior through punishment and reward. Punishment is a dominance behavior, and because of this it is in our behavior to assume a punisher, or dominant individual, for events that are adverse.

Assuming an event is simply chance or accident is a behavior that is not very natural. Ignoring a “warning” from a dominant individual is antisocial. So, assuming an event is random and otherwise simply coincidence is an aberrant, antisocial behavior.

I’ve long maintained that fundies need a simplistic structure to their world, with God acting as father and punisher.

Pat followed up a bit later with this comment:

Okay : ) - I guess not everybody shares my genuine fascination with this phenomenon. I don’t attribute it to a weakness of character or a lack of intelligence. If anything, the reason it is so widespread is because it is a “normal” behavior, like hatred of the outsider, and it might be that the only way to counter it is to understand it in depth and where its source lies.

Education appears to be the only tonic that works to remedy this, so it would seem to be better to go after intolerance of education ahead of focusing on attacking logically weak accepted conventions. Currently, there is perceived nobility in lacking education, and this needs to be crushed rather deliberately. People once educated in critical thinking are much less vulnerable to fallacies of magical thinking.

I would love to attribute it to a weakness of character or a lack of intelligence, but I fear he may be right. This is how we’re wired. We can rise above it, but the normal or default state is to believe in monsters. That’s also why education is so important, and we can’t let it be corrupted by IDers.

The evil Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which has been slammed repeatedly by fundies and conservatives of all stripes as an “activist court”, has just ruled in favor of fundies. Oops! I thought they legislated from the bench.

Arizona has a program where any organization can get the state to offer a special license plate. The Arizona License Plate Commission had denied the application of fundie whack-jobs Choose Life (who already have special license plates in Florida and other states). The Arizona agency denied the application on the grounds that it was too controversial and that it would give the impression that the state was endorsing the group’s anti-abortion message.

The Court decided that the agency had unfairly denied the group its right to free speech.

As much as I dislike what the fundies are trying to do to America and our rights as citizens, I must agree with the court. The rights of all citizens — even the abhorrent ones — must be protected.

I agree that by putting the emblem on the license plate it gives the impression of state approval, but Arizona should have thought of that before offering the program. There are very few organizations that are free from controversy. This program was bound to cause a conflict. You either have to suck it up and accept every legal organization’s application or deny them all.

I would prefer it if we kept our license plates solely for their original purpose. I don’t see the need to turn them into vehicles (ouch!) for self expression. That would avoid the whole impression of state sponsorship of controversial opinions.

The irony of this case is certainly lost on the fundies. They couldn’t have picked a better court to hear this case. The Ninth Circuit is a staunch defender of our Constitutional rights. This usually works against the fundies, because they are usually scheming to take away our rights. The fundies bleat and bray every time the Ninth Circuit upholds the Constitution. When they finally have a case where their rights have been infringed, this most-hated of courts has come to their rescue.

Do you think they’ll notice the irony? Do you think that maybe they’ll start to understand why the Court has been so adamant in the past? Of course not!

As we discussed previously, one of the characteristics of a good and proper theory is that it can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena. One of the vexing things about the ID creationists is that they spend all of their time bashing “Darwinism” without ever stepping up to the plate and telling us what works in their theory. In fact, their rabid avoidance to doing so suggests that their “theory” must be completely bogus.

About a week ago, Denyse O’Leary tried to tackle the question of “What does Intelligent Design creationism predict?” She either completely misunderstood the question (quite likely, since she apparently doesn’t understand science) or she was dodging it (quite likely, since her “theory” is bankrupt). Her answers mostly consisted of “Darwinists will be unable to…”.

The people who promote a theory are the ones who are supposed to support it by coming up with some predictions it makes and then going out and doing some research to see if those predictions are true. It shouldn’t be up to the rest of us to do their work for them. Nevertheless, the Blue Collar Scientist has decided to tackle the issue in his article “Intelligent Design Creationism does too predict outcomes!” Go over and read the whole thing. I’ll just excerpt a piece and add some comments.

Intelligent design creationism claims … that different creatures are specially created and are not related.

If that were so, I believe that we would find that these creatures would be made of the most appropriate chemical compounds given their phenotype and environment. But this turns out to not be so - out of a possible thousands of amino acids, all of life’s protein is built by only twenty of them, and all the species in the world can only produce a couple hundred amino acids. Despite this, some amino acids that are not used or made by living organisms would be quite useful to many living creatures today. For example, synthetic amino acids with efficient chelating properties might be quite useful to organisms living in areas with arsenic-contaminated water. Yet such organisms lack such useful amino acids and must make do with less effective chelators.

That is a very specific prediction that flows logically from ID creationism. Too bad the prediction is wrong. Evolutionary theory, however, predicts that there would only be a few amino acids, because evolution repurposes existing materials. It’s much harder to make a whole new material from scratch than to take one that is almost right and just jam it in there or bend it a bit to make it fit.

Everywhere you look in nature, you see this reuse and repurposing of existing materials, often in inefficient ways. Nobody would design things like this.

Go over to Blue Collar Scientist and read the rest of the article. He has some more good examples.

George Bush has so massively ruined this country that you’d think that a Democrat winning in November is guaranteed. That’s the logical assumption anyway, but never underestimate the right wing’s penchant for national self-destruction. Ironically (of course, since everything these people do is ironic), they will destroy this country in order to save it.

Today we have two articles from two very different places that prove this point.

First up is Wynton Hall’s article “Kamikaze Republicanism”, published at that bastion of right-wing intellectualism, TownHall.com. Some Republicans are upset that a “moderate” Republican — such as McCain, Romney, or Giuliani — might get the nomination, so they’re threatening to not vote in November. Wynton Hall thinks that’s a terrible mistake. He writes:

Rants of frustration such as these, while understandable, are baseless. More than that, they belie and betray the Republican and conservative arguments regarding the existential battle of our time…

Now he has my attention! Apparently there is one issue so important that the future of the entire country rests on it. And apparently only the Republicans are capable of protecting us from it! Tell me, Wynton Hall, what is it?

…the long term threats posed by radical Islamic terrorism.

What?! Yes, this is a grave issue, but where is the evidence that the Republicans are the only ones qualified to protect us? In fact, there is ample evidence that they aren’t qualified at all. Here are just three:

(1) The attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on September 11, 2001 happened on George W. Bush’s “watch”. I put “watch” in quotation marks, because this dim bulb was doing anything but protecting us from terrorism at the time. Despite mountains of evidence — including the famous Presidential Daily Briefing titled “Bin Laden Determined to Attack within the U.S.” — the Shrub chose to do nothing to protect us. This criminal negligence led to the largest terror attack upon us within our borders.

(2) Despite every single bit of evidence that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks, Dim W. Bulb decided to pull most of our troops out of our successful routing of al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan and go off on an irrelevant adventure in Iraq. This not only put us into the Iraqi quagmire, which has virtually bankrupted our country, but it allowed bin Laden to escape, al Qaeda to regroup, and the Taliban to retake parts of Afghanistan.

(3) Our continued presence in Iraq just serves to radicalize Islam, thus creating more terrorists. Bush hasn’t protected us from terrorism. He has created more of it!

Hall’s article continues with:

Individual liberties and freedoms are only useful insofar as one is alive to exercise them. To put it as Ronald Reagan put it, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.”

That is one of the biggest ironies in Hall’s article. In the name of “protecting us from terror”, the current administration has trampled many of our civil liberties. This is the generation that is losing those liberties and freedoms that Ronald Reagan spoke of. Wynton Hall is leading the charge.

The Facts from Halifax

The second article I want to mention comes from HalifaxLive.com. Al Hollingsworth of Nova Scotia writes in “Will the Christian Right Return a Republican?”:

Speaking of Satan, those who fear him the most, born-again Christians, just might be holding the outcome in the palms of their prayer-folded hands.

And once again, they will probably ruin things for the rest of us.

George W. Bush, like his father before him, and Ronald Reagan before GHWB, all pointed to the solid support they received, not only from the Christian Right, but also from many Catholics. It all goes back to 1976 and Jimmy Carter. That’s right, it was the Democrats who awakened the followers of Jesus Christ.

Carter, a born-again Christian and a lay preacher, mobilized the Southern Baptists, who in turn reached out to other Protestant denominations. The ensuing result was a massive block of voters who believed that in Carter, they had the individual who would, using the Bible, lead them in a Godly way.

Ack! We gave the Nobel Peace Prize to the guy who activated the fundie voting block?

However, Carter, who had been backed by half of all evangelical voters, had a surprise for the religious zealots. He was a genuine Democrat, and was not about to govern with one hand on the Bible. The anti-abortionists, anti-gays, prayer in school groups, etc, were thunderstruck that Carter, a good and decent man, wasn’t the right-wing loony they coveted.

And that was the last time the loonies voted for a Democrat.

The question now is, do they have the numbers needed to stop the Democrats? Those who think our friends south of the 49th, are only anxious to rid themselves of Bush and the Republicans are not looking outside the so-called box. They may not like the war in Iraq, but when push comes to shove, I’m betting their right wing agenda will win the day.

As Hollingsworth points out, the fundies are a huge voting block. It doesn’t seem to matter what the Republicans do to them. In the end, they will look at their favorite issues (hating reproductive rights and hating gays) and vote Republican.

Add to that the very large group of people that Wynton Hall described above, who fear Islamic terrorism so much that they will tolerate any violence done to our own Constitution, and you have a majority.

The Republicans will probably win in November.

The Design of Life is an ID creationist lie-fest passing itself off as a textbook. It’s written by two of the biggest proponents of this religious non-science, William A. Dembski and Jonathan Wells, who both work at the Discovery Institute clown college. This book is actually just a retitled third edition of the book Of Pandas and People that got laughed out of the Kitzmiller v. Dover creationism trial.

One of their tactics for promoting the book is by having a blog, where they post sciency articles that creationist stooges like Denyse O’Leary and Access Research Network (see earlier BoF articles here, here, and here) can then trumpet over and over in their own blogs.

So over on the Design of Life blog is a post titled “The Tree of Life and Speciation – the odd case of the beefalo”, written by Jane Harris-Zsovan. All I could find out about Jane Harris-Zsovan is that she’s an anti-science writer living in Canada. Let’s see what she has to say about the Beefalo and how it proves ID creationism or disproves evolution or demonstrates perpetual motion, or whatever crazy claim she has (I still haven’t figured out what her goal is here).

Does the classification system used by biologists accurately reflect the path of natural selection through the generations? And does it trace the differentiation of species? Not necessarily.

Stop the presses! Oh wait. That’s something we already knew. I guess it’s news to the ID creationists, though. Those people don’t know a whole lot of science.

Taxonomy is an attempt to describe and classify all living organisms. Closely related to that is Systematics, which studies how these organisms are related to each other through evolution. It’s a little more complicated and nuanced than that, but hopefully those definitions will work well enough for this article.

OK, so scientists want to know what all the plants, animals, fungi, etc. are, and how they all evolved. They’ve come up with the classification scheme that we know today. Ideally, the taxonomic charts that we’ve put together would accurately reflect exactly how everything is related and how they evolved. There’s going to be a little bit of error here. In the old days, they had to rely on morphology and other techniques to puzzle out relationships. Things have gotten a lot better now that we have genetics, but there are still places that need tweaking.

Anyway, so we have animals classified into different orders, genera, species, etc. It’s not a perfect classification, partly due to historical inertia. It takes time to get everybody to agree that there’s enough evidence to justify calling something a new sub-species or merging two genera or such. Until that consensus emerges, we continue to use the old classification. Remember, there are millions of species, and there aren’t that many people working just on taxonomy and systematics. This stuff takes time to resolve.

So in Harris-Zsovan’s article published on the Design of Life blog, she’s claiming that the current taxonomic charts aren’t perfect. We already knew that. What’s your point, Jane? And how does that help your claim? And just what is your claim? Well, let’s delve deeper into the article.

Consider the Bovoids, genus bison (for example, the North American buffalo) and genus bos (for example, domesticated cattle).

Now might be a good time to look at their relative taxonomies.

Notice how closely related the two are. They’re even in the same sub-family, only splitting at the genus level. Theoretically, two organisms of the same genus but different species cannot mate and produce fertile offspring. In the case of the bison and cattle, we’re even going one level higher than that: same sub-family but different genera. If the guys who put this table together are correct, the two can’t interbreed. (Remember, though, that nature is a broad continuum. It is only humans who want to put things into artificial boxes. The boundaries between boxes are often blurry in real life.)

According to most theories of speciation, a cross between two genera (such as genus bison and genus bos) after a geographical separation of many thousands of years is unlikely.

Actually, time has nothing to do with it. If the animals have been correctly cataloged and truly are of different genera, they wouldn’t be able to interbreed and produce fertile offspring, even if they’re sharing the same pasture.

But tell that to a rancher in Western Canada or the United States where buffalo bison, raised on ranches, are interbred with cattle. (These animals have been known to interbreed since the 18th century.) The resulting offspring are called beefalo or cattalo.

As she points out, this is not news, so I’m still having trouble figuring out what this has to do with ID creationism or evolution or the Roswell crash (or whatever she’s trying to convince us of).

Both domestic cattle and American bison can interbreed with their cousin, the European bison (the wisent), as well as with yaks and other members of the bos genus. A cattle/wisent cross is called a zubron. A yak/cattle hybrid is known as a dzo.
…
Hybridization of European and American bison does not appear to cause fertility problems even in first generation males. Some taxonomists argue that the wisent and the American bison are not separate species at all.

Those taxonomists are probably correct. It looks like the charts need to be updated. This is science in action. When new data come in, you revise your hypothesis accordingly.

Ancestors of American bison and European bison are thought have descended from an ancient relative in Southern Asia over 400,000 years ago in the Pliocene epoch.
…
But, after millennia of separation, European and North American bison are still recognizable as bison.

BFD. Crocodiles are still recognizable as crocodiles after millions of years. All that means is that their environment has been relatively stable and hasn’t produced much evolutionary pressure.

Darwin’s theory of speciation through natural selection would predict that the hybridization of cows and yaks with bison is quite unlikely.

What? Who says? Show me where in evolutionary biology it says that populations separated geographically for thousands of years are required to be separate species. If the environments are similar and there are no other evolutionary pressures, you would expect them to remain the same species! (Genetic drift is one factor that could cause speciation, but that’s random and could just as easily not happen.)

She then points out (as I did in the table above) that bison and cattle are in two different genera.

The existence of the beefalo and its cousins, the dzo and zubron, show us that - after millennia of separation - the gene pool of individuals in the genus bison and genus bos has not changed enough to make interbreeding impossible.

Yes, Jane. So what’s your point?

And, in the case of European bison and American bison, there is debate as to whether speciation has fully occurred.

Yes, Jane. So what’s your point?

Clearly, the Darwinian theory of speciation by natural selection is not the whole story. Maybe it’s not the true story at all.

What?! That’s your whole thesis? I read this whole article just to find out you’re retarded?! Just to find out that you have no concept of how evolution works?

I’ll repeat my question from above: Where in “Darwinian” theory, or anywhere else in biology for that matter, does it say that speciation has to occur? And since you brought it up, where in this narrative is the natural selection? There’s no selection pressure! Without selection, speciation by natural selection can’t happen!

“[S]peciation by natural selection is not the whole story”, because it’s not any part of this story, you freaking moron!

And even if this were somehow a flaw in evolutionary theory (it’s not), how does that prove Intelligent Design creationism? It doesn’t! Once again, the ID-iot creatards think that proving the moon isn’t green somehow proves that it’s purple!

Once — just once — I’d like to read an article by these people that showed an understanding of any of the following:

• Evolution
• Science
• Logic
• Reality

Take your pick, Jane. Just one is all I ask.

I’ll be posting an article later tonight about something an ID advocate has written. I’m still trying to figure out how the article proves ID creationism. Maybe I’ll have it figured out by tonight. In the meantime, enjoy these two videos by one of my favorite YouTube users, CDK007.

The first one shows that Intelligent Design IS creationism:

(YouTube page is here.)

You’ve probably heard creationists claim that “randomness cannot create information”, implying that evolution (which creationists claim is random) cannot add information to the genome. This video shows how the random events of DNA replication, mating, and accidents, coupled with the non-random pressure of predation, drive evolution.

(YouTube page is here.)

What would happen if the Son of God returned today? That is the premise of The Second Coming, a British TV movie from 2003.

It’s the story of Stephen Baxter, an underachieving middle-aged video store employee who disappears for 40 days and 40 nights. When he returns, he claims to be the Son of God. In order to announce his arrival, Baxter alerts people via the internet. After all, if you read a wild claim on the internet, you know it’s true!

Unlike the lunatics who promote crazy ideas such as Planet X, Roswell, and Intelligent Design creationism, Baxter really is the Son of God. He lights up Manchester Football Stadium in the middle of the night with a column of daylight to get everybody’s attention. Then he tells them:

I know what you’re like. I’ve been you. Knowing there is great evil and doing nothing about it. Keeping my head down, giving a quid to charity, signing a petition, joking about it down the pub, but doing nothing. Even now I want to do nothing, I want to go home, shut the door and pretend that nothing is happening. But I can’t, because I was born the son of God.

The son of God came to you before and gave you a testament, but you did nothing. This time, there’ll be a third testament. A guide to living your lives today, and it will be written by you. In five days, I will be given the third testament, then we’ll start again, every country, every religion. And, don’t argue. All you Christians out there, don’t say “We were right.” Because I’ve seen what you’ve done. You stupid, stupid people. You’ve finally did it, I’ve seen it. Heaven is empty, while hell is bursting to the seams.

Naturally, this causes a bit of commotion. How people (and society) react is part of the story. Among them is Baxter’s skeptical quasi-girlfriend. There’s also the sub-plot of the devil and his plans to wreck the whole thing. Another part of the story is how Baxter himself reacts. He’s getting this insight from God in bits and pieces, so even he doesn’t understand it very well.

You might think that a movie with this premise might end up being some sort of Mel Gibson-esque heavy-handed morality play, or possibly some sort of feel-good “inspirational” tale. That’s certainly how Hollywood would have done it. Thankfully, the British are better than that.

As I was watching the film, I was impressed with the excellent writing and acting, but I harbored a quiet dread that the ending would almost certainly piss me off. As the ending started to unfold, I got apprehensive. Why was the one character behaving that way? It seemed wrong. The events continued to play out, and finally they were explained. Only one thought went through my mind: BRILLIANT!

Reading viewer comments on the Internet Movie Database was interesting. There is definitely a split among them as to whether the ending is any good. I suspect that may have something to do with the viewer’s religious and philosophical views. Certain flavors of Christianity would probably be unhappy with how religion is portrayed or that the ending is incompatible with their version of life, the universe, and everything. Some of us like the ending, because that is the way things ought to be. If only!

In the end, it really is a feel-good inspirational tale, but not in the way that most people would define that. It’s a very humanistic tale. Ultimately, it celebrates us as human beings, our potential, and what we can accomplish without crutches.

You need to find this movie. You can rent it from Netflix, Greencine, and probably elsewhere. You can also buy the DVD from Powell’s or elsewhere.

(Hat tip to loyal reader Ericsan for recommending this film!)

This blog is getting a few more comments these days than it used to. Overall, the quality of the comments has been quite good, and the exchanges have been mostly civil. However, things have bordered on rudeness a few times, so I thought I should come up with a formal comment policy.

I’m hoping that we don’t need a set of strict laws. Maybe these few guidelines will be sufficient:

• No spamming. (The only real violators of this rule are spambots.)
• No gobs o’ links. The spam filter automatically holds for review any comment that contains more than one link. If you aren’t a spammer, I will probably approve your comment within 12 hours. However, your bunch o’ links should be somehow contributing to the discussion. For example, one time, a creationist didn’t like one of my posts, so he tried to post a comment. His comment consisted mostly of single sentences followed by a link, such as “See how Darwinists are wrong: [then a link to Answers in Genesis]”. It was about eight links. It contributed nothing to the discussion, so I didn’t approve it. (I did, however, send him an email explaining why.)
• If you make a factual statement (vs. an opinion) that contradicts common knowledge, back it up. If you are challenged on a statement (and I agree with the challenge), you will not be allowed to make new comments until you support the challenged claims. Example of common knowledge: Evolution is a fact. Example of a statement that contradicts common knowledge: The Bible is the inerrant word of God (This is a factual claim, but it fails on two counts: (1) There is no evidence that a God exists, and (2) No evidence that the Bible contains God’s word.).
• No quote mining. Quoting something once is fine, but quoting many things or posting a series of comments with quotes does not add to the discussion. If you can’t use your own words, then you obviously have nothing to say.

I might add to this as I think of other things, but I’m hoping that you folks don’t give me any reasons to add much more. The main thing I want to do is maintain the comments as a quasi-pleasant place to be. If somebody is making it unpleasant, that will have to be fixed.