Blue Collar Scientist

A few weeks ago, when the news that creationist whackjobs were giving tours at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, I thought I might post a little article here excogitating on how two-faced creationists are, and about how the people doing the tours are nothing more than dishonest cult-enforcers, and about how, despite this, the museum pretty much has its hands tied.

I didn’t, because I didn’t think I really had anything to add that hadn’t already been said (you’ll notice that my m.o. on this blog is to cover a newsy topic a day or two late, but with a surplus of dollars - i.e., with more research than the average blog is putting into it). So I gave it a pass.

However, I’ve now found the best blog entry every written about the topic, bar none. The post is by a DMNS volunteer who has dealt with these whackjobs in person.

(Oh, also, the author is fifteen years old. The main thing about blogging that I learn from this is that I’m doing it wrong.)

Cripes, stop reading my stuff, and get over there and read it, already.

Seriously.

Read it all.

Yesterday, Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, the Director of the Vatican Observatory (full disclosure: the Vatican Observatory on Mt. Graham was a client of mine), was interviewed by the newspaper L’Osservatore Romano. He had some things to say about the existence of extraterrestrial life that were of interest to me.

I’m currently peddling a speech about exoplanets, in which I devote about the last fourth of the talk to the possibility of extraterrestrial life, as deduced from the current state of knowledge of exoplanets, planetary formation in proplyds, and the fairly widespread existence of molecules like amino acids and sugars in space. My verdict is that the existence extraterrestrial life is so highly probable to be virtually certain.

What I’ve learned is that fundamentalist christians really, really hate the fact that I bring up the probability of extraterrestrial life and would rather me shut up about it. I’ve not really bothered to find out why, but when Dr. Funes made his comments, I decided to do a bit of research.

Dr. Funes, who I would rate not a religious extremist¹, gets to go first:

“How can we rule out that life may have developed elsewhere?” Funes said. “Just as we consider earthly creatures as ‘a brother,’ and ’sister,’ why should we not talk about an ‘extraterrestrial brother’? It would still be part of creation.”

Ruling out the existence of aliens would be like “putting limits” on God’s creative freedom, he said.

The Bible “is not a science book,” Funes said, adding that he believes the Big Bang theory is the most “reasonable” explanation for the creation of the universe. The theory says the universe began billions of years ago in the explosion of a single, super-dense point that contained all matter.

All of this sounds fairly reasonable to me, as far as it goes. I mean, if you accept the idea of an omnipotent creating god, then you can’t with any legitimacy impose any arbitrary limitations on what he might have done in the distant past. And you certainly can’t do it from the statements of some late bronze- and iron-age guys who wrote up their impressions of this supposed god in what later became a book. It is obvious they weren’t thinking in terms of the possibility that the Earth wasn’t unique.

And it was this, combined with some of the pushback I’ve been getting from the exoplanets talk, that had me wondering why the fundies had their panties in an uproar over the issue. I found some useful explanation at the notoriously untruthful site, Answers in Genesis.

They use three basic arguments to “prove” that there can be no extraterrestrial life. And mind you, they aren’t talking about extraterrestrial intelligent life, they are ruling out pond scum and even less derived kinds of life than that. Their argument denies even a pre-DNA self-replicating form of life.

Argument one boils down to: The Earth was “designed” for life, and everything else in the universe was “designed” for other reasons.

The earth is unique. God designed the earth for life (Isaiah 45:18). The other planets have an entirely different purpose than does the earth, and thus, they are designed differently.

You would expect Isaiah 45:18 to be a pretty powerful statement on the uniqueness of life on the Earth if that is the only part of the bible they can muster to support their remarkably extremist belief. But you’d be wrong:

For thus says the LORD, who created the heavens (He is the God who formed the earth and made it, He established it and did not create it a waste place, but formed it to be inhabited), “I am the LORD, and there is none else.

How does this relate exactly? There is nothing at all about Earth being unique, let alone about life being unique. In fact, it says that god “did not create a waste place,” which strongly implies that he’s not in the habit of slapping terrestrial planets on the great heavenly pottery wheel for the purpose of leaving them lifeless and barren. The fact of the matter is that to derive the uniqueness of life from this verse, you have to read it with a strong, blinding filter of your own arrogant presupposition in place. And what does the bible have to say about doing that?

• I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues which are written in this book; and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his part from the tree of life and from the holy city, which are written in this book. (Revelation 22:18-19)

• You shall not add to the word which I am commanding you, nor take away from it, that you may keep the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you. (Deuteronomy 4:2)
• Whatever I command you, you shall be careful to do; you shall not add to nor take away from it. (Deuteronomy 12:32)
• Every word of God is tested; He is a shield to those who take refuge in Him. Do not add to His words Or He will reprove you, and you will be proved a liar. (Proverbs 30:5-6)

While some of these don’t address the specific issue of imposing your own traditional beliefs on your study of scripture, the preponderance of evidence would suggest that this god doesn’t like it when people add to, or take away from, what he’s said. So it seems to me that Answers in Genesis has actually taken an anti-biblical view of the issue, which is, of course, no surprise.

The second argument is that there can’t be any extraterrestrial life because the bible doesn’t explicitly mention that it was created:

In Genesis 1 we read that God created plants on the earth on Day 3, birds to fly in the atmosphere and marine life to swim in the ocean on Day 5, and animals to inhabit the land on Day 6. Human beings were also made on Day 6 and were given dominion over the animals. But where does the Bible discuss the creation of life on the “lights in the expanse of the heavens”? There is no such description because the lights in the expanse were not designed to accommodate life…. From a biblical perspective, extraterrestrial life does not seem reasonable.

At this point you simply have to point out that plastic exists. The frozen polar caps of Earth exist. Death Valley exists. The Grand Canyon exists. Bacteria and Archaea exist. The Duck-Billed Platypus exists. Antibiotics exist. The point being that none of these things are specifically mentioned as having been created; and although you could lump some of them in with their broader classes (you might be able to smuggle the Platypus in with “animals,” for example), there are some things that have existed for a very long time that don’t fit anywhere in the Genesis description - such as the polar caps, or antibiotics.

Let’s take this a bit further. AiG’s argument is that “extraterrestrial life doesn’t exist, because Genesis doesn’t mention it.” There’s a hidden assumption in that statement, and that is that the Genesis account offers a complete, comprehensive accounting of all the things that were created. But the Genesis account itself fails to mention that it is a comprehensive account. Again, we have some dimwit, dishonest theologians bringing their own traditional beliefs into their reading of the bible and coming to wild conclusions as a result.

The third argument AiG deploys is strictly theological - that is, even more so than their vapid outgassings so far - and applies only to the possibility of extraterrestrial intelligent life. Basically, it goes like this:

1. Adam sinned. (Yes, they say Adam, not Adam and Eve.)
2. As a result, death and sin entered the world. (They cite Romans 5:12: Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned….
3. It was necessary for Jesus Christ, who was both human and god, to redeem this sin by being sacrificially killed. Killing animals couldn’t do it because they are not of the same “blood” as human beings.

Given all this - and I’ll take them at their word just for the sake of discussion, they conclude:

When we consider how the salvation plan might apply to any hypothetical extraterrestrial (but otherwise human-like) beings, we are presented with a problem. If there were Vulcans or Klingons out there, how would they be saved? They are not blood relatives of Jesus, and so Christ’s shed blood cannot pay for their sin. One might at first suppose that Christ also visited their world, lived there, and died there as well, but this is antibiblical. Christ died once for all (1 Peter 3:18; Hebrews 9:27–28, Hebrews 10:10)….

One might suppose that alien beings have never sinned, in which case they would not need to be redeemed. But then another problem emerges: they suffer the effects of sin, despite having never sinned. Adam’s sin has affected all of creation— not just mankind. Romans 8:20–22 makes it clear that the entirety of creation suffers under the bondage of corruption.

Having painted themselves into this corner, they say - hold on to your britches, this is really funny:

These kinds of issues highlight the problem of attempting to incorporate an antibiblical notion into the Christian worldview.

Hahaha! There’s two legitimate answers to this. The atheist would quite rightly say that this is a sign that your “christian worldview” is a bunch of make-believe rubbish, and maybe you should consider reality as an alternative.

The moderate religionist might point out that perhaps this is a sign that they’ve taken the “christian worldview” and pressed it a little too hard, believing it to mean something far beyond what the words were ever intended to say, and that maybe they should lay off the crack pipes for a bit.

(Moderate religionists might point this out, and they should - because whackjobs like these make them all look stupid and dishonorable - but for reasons that puzzle me, they rarely do.)

The AiG page goes on to debunk UFOs as alien spacecraft, a conclusion that I heartily endorse. Their arguments, of course, are rubbish.

Conclusion: Religionists who deny the possibility of extraterrestrial life are extremists.

1. Despite his church’s brutal views on contraception, etc - most Catholics I know freely ignore the behaviorally harmful aspects of Catholic teaching, and so I rate them more or less mainstream. In the meantime, I fully recognize the evil that the church is perpetrating against peoples in developing nations, of low income, of restricted educational opportunities, and so forth - and I condemn it. [↩]

I’ve previously posted about John Freshwater, the teacher at a Mt. Vernon, Ohio school who is accused of mutilating students by burning religious imagery into their flesh. Yesterday, Blake Stacey left a comment to that post pointing out a new story in the Columbus Dispatch, which has more details about the allegations.

The tool a student says his science teacher used to burn a cross on his arm comes with a warning: Never touch or come in contact with the high voltage output of this device.

When the boy’s parents complained, administrators at Mount Vernon Middle School told John Freshwater, the school’s eighth-grade science teacher, to lock up or remove the BD-10A High Frequency Generator from the classroom. About the same size and shape as a power screwdriver, its tip puts out up to 50,000 volts of electricity.

Science teachers use the generator to ionize gases in a test tube so that students can identify them by their glowing colors.

When I made my original posting, I was struggling to think of what kind of “electric shock machine” (that’s the phrase used in the story I quoted at the time) could have been at issue here. I must have gotten hung up on the idea that the machine was made for the purpose of administering electrical shocks - I had electroshock therapy devices and all kinds of other, stranger things going through my head. But the Dispatch story identifies exactly what was used - and it is something I’ve used myself.

It is basically a Tesla coil, packaged up in a nice, convenient flashlight-like enclosure. They are used industrially to test for pinhole leaks and to test welds, but if you have a very rarified gas inside a glass container, you can use it to ionize the gas and cause it to give off pretty colors. The principle is exactly the same as the neon sign advertising Alaskan Amber at your local pub¹, and this application of the device is often used to demonstrate ionization states and excitation emission in a physics class. If you’ve used this kind of device for instructional purposes, you will certainly have noticed the smell of ozone surrounding its use.

I have used this device instructionally, and in a moment of carelessness, I once burned myself with one. My forearm made contact with the electrode of the device for about half or three-quarters of a second - this necessarily being an estimate. This experience wasn’t too painful at the time, on the order of getting a good strong static shock after shuffling your feet on the carpets. But it did leave one hell of a welt that got more and more painful over the course of the next three or four days. My recollection is that the small wound stayed painful for a week or so. Eventually the welt that was raised went down, scabbed over, and after about two weeks, the scab fell off. I had a red mark that persisted for about two or three months. It was by no means a pleasant experience. But it wasn’t all that severe; I’m a grown-up and I can take the consequences of my own brief clumsiness.

The issue here is whether middle school children should be forced to endure the same experience by an adult who has been given power over them. And the answer is obviously no.

The maker of the device is quoted in the article as saying:

“We have instructions to warn people that it’s not a toy,” said Cuzelis, who owns Electro-Technic Products in Chicago. “If this device is directed for seconds (on the skin), that’s a clear misuse of the product.”

He also points out that he’s not heard of severe injuries caused by the device, which I can readily understand, because when I got in touch with the business end of this thing, I dang near threw it across the classroom from my reflexive reaction to the pain. They’ve never been sued over its use, and I’d say that’s a result of the device being straightforward to use, sensibly designed, and clearly labeled with a warning not to use it on skin or flesh.

The Dispatch article says that the investigation the school is undertaking will be finished by the end of this month. The school has apparently already acknowledged that Freshwater was in possession of the device he is accused of using to burn students; the principal wrote a letter warning Freshwater not to shock students with the device in January, following a December 10, 2007 complaint from a parent. Freshwater has hired a lawyer and refuses to talk about the allegations.

I’m looking forward to learning the results of this investigation at the close of May.

1. If you can’t get Alaskan Amber at your local pub, don’t despair. Really. [↩]

The Institute for Creation Research has released an enemies list, apparently as a tribute to the deep paranoia of Nixonian politics they engage in. It contains some interesting tidbits. It is mostly the usual collection of misleading quote-mining lying by misquoting others, but a few points had me laughing.

For example, about Dawkins - their Enemy Number One - they say:

It is no wonder that Dawkins has elsewhere concluded that “life has no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference.” If this is what evolution offers, can there be any other result but despair?

Any other result but despair? Let us read from the Bible. Please open the good book to Ecclesiastes 11:8, and read along with me:

Indeed, if a man should live many years, let him rejoice in them all, and let him remember the days of darkness, for they will be many. Everything that is to come will be futility.

Well, I can only speak for myself, but it seems pretty clear to me who is purveying despair, and it isn’t Richard Dawkins.

Under Eugenie Scott’s entry, they trot out the tired old lie that creationists have been retreading since the 1860’s:

[T]here has been no observable scientific evidence for macroevolution.

Of course there have been; at one web page alone, you can learn about no less than 29 observed instances of evolutionary speciation, complete with citations to the scientific literature. One wonders, if they are right in their claim that evolution is false, why they have to lie about the scientific findings on evolution all the time….

But that’s not really my point here. I want to return to the bible again. Please attend to Genesis 1:11:

And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit….

Sadly, the ICR doesn’t respect its own sources. If you read that, you surely noted that the bible does not say that god created plants. The text clearly states that plants were to be brought forth by the Earth. This is a clear example of biogenesis, the transition of inorganic material to advanced organic life.

And let us also look at 1 Corinthians 15:45:

So also it is written, “The first MAN, Adam, BECAME A LIVING SOUL.” The last Adam became a life-giving spirit. However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural; then the spiritual.

A strong endorsement of the naturalistic world view that science, and evolutionary theory, represents. Naturalism comes first; without it, the bible says you can’t have spiritualism.

They move on to PZ Myers, and lead with their chin ignorance:

Although many other evolutionists are active “evangelists” in the world today, P. Z. Myers deserves a mention because of his prolific presence in cyberspace, mainly through blogs on his website Pharyngula.

I was under the impression that Myers’ blog, Pharyngula, is at Scienceblogs. Shows you what I know.

They don’t really say anything in the Myers section about their beliefs, so there’s no way to consult the final authority (the Bible) on the truth of their claims. So, disappointed, I will simply have to bring this posting to a close.

Ken Miller has written an op-ed for the Boston Globe that all should read.

The Discovery Institute has written more anti-semitic Holocaust revisionism, this time slandering a recently-passed resolution of the Methodist Church. The DI says:

The quadrennial international convention of the Methodist Church, meeting in Fort Worth, today adopted an historic and detailed resolution deploring the legacy of Darwinian eugenics that saw its 20th century extreme expression in the theories of Adolf Hitler.

So the Discovery Institute says, among other things, that eugenics specifically comes from Charles Darwin.

Contrast this with what the Methodists’ well-researched resolution actually says:

The study of eugenics did not begin with Hitler or his German scientists, but rather was first promoted by Sir Francis Galton, in England.

Darwinian eugenics, huh?

Poor creationists. They can’t tell the difference between the name Charles Darwin and Francis Galton. No surprise, I guess; they seem to be unable to understand considerably simpler biological concepts.

Hat tip to Bay of Fundie, who has a more complete takedown.

One of my favorite authors, writerdd on the Skepchick blog, has a post on the topic of moderate Christianity and whether it is the authentic voice of religion. She raises many interesting points and I thought I’d offer my perspective here.

The media features fundamentalists or extreme conservative believers every time a topic regarding morality comes up, as if these are the only people who can speak for believers, as if they have authority to speak for all people of faith on these issues. Not only are atheists and agnostics left out of the conversation, but moderate and liberal believers often are as well…. When journalists act this way, they are echoing the fundamentalist point of view.

I think writerdd is missing the bigger perspective here. The mainstream media is useless, or worse, in part because their function is not (as we are led to think) covering the story, but gaining ratings. They include religious extremists in stories involving morality because:

1. Such people are available to the media - they promote themselves as sources, so every reporter and producer knows how to call them up and get them on the air.
2. Such people create controversy and drama when they appear, which improves ratings.
3. Media producers are generally very socially savvy, even to the point of knowing how to manipulate people and being willing to do it to get what they want; but they are not, in general, critical thinkers, or even knowledgeable about the topics that they cover.

When journalists bring religious extremists to the airwaves, they are giving them a voice, but they are not (in my opinion) necessarily echoing religiously extreme points of view - unless they take the trouble to agree with their source, pitch them softball questions, and so forth. There’s certainly no shortage of religious extremists in the ‘librul media.’

Sam Harris and many others often claim that moderate religious groups give cover to fundamentalists by honoring the holy books that they use to build their walls of doctrine. I used to agree, but now I’m not so sure that’s true.

I think Sam Harris is right, and wrong. He’s right that moderate religious groups give cover to fundamentalists. He’s wrong to say that they do it by honoring their holy books. They do it by failing to oppose exremists. By failing to denounce the destructive religious behaviors of those who claim to be co-religionists, they do indeed provide protection.

I’ve said in the past that one way to distinguish a non-extremist religious group is to see if they oppose (through excommunication, political opposition, etc) those who take their beliefs too far. Take a quick look at religiously motivated terrorism, and you will see very few of their co-religionist leaders taking the trouble to denounce their violent extremists.

A very similar situation holds true today, in America, where Christians who look forward to the destruction of the Jews as the precursor to Christ’s return, want total war in the mideast to accelerate that event, and who adopt a variety of political positions and personal behaviors that harm their neighbors - opposing evidence-based medicine, depriving minorities of basic civil rights, molesting children, and so on - go almost entirely unopposed or remarked upon by mainstream Christians.

That’s enabling behavior. At times it seems the only thing the moderates aren’t doing is buying the extremists bombs and beer.

I don’t know about you, but I, for one, would rather encourage a moderate, liberal kind of faith where people are free to cherry pick what they want to believe while they conform to modern, secular values and use skepticism to make decisions in daily life. I think I’d like to befriend people with this type of faith and work together with them to keep fundamentalism in check, to preserve the separation of church and state, and to protect the benefits of a scientific and secular society.

I agree. And I’m putting my money where my mouth is: For three years, I’ve had a relationship with a private religious school that brings me into the classroom frequently to teach science and critical thinking. I work with religious teachers and religious school administrators in that context, and while I would say they are moderate, rather than extremist, religionists, we still have our disagreements. But we all understand that our disagreements constitute an argument among friends, nothing more.

So what is everybody else doing about their opinions on this issue?

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed has been out in the theaters now for two weeks, and we can revisit the question: how has it done?

Pretty crappy.

After making 2.9 million on its opening weekend, it has barely made that in the following two weeks, for a total of 5.9 million as of today.

After opening in an unprecedented 1,052 theaters, it has been dropped almost 400 of them; as of today it is in only 656 theaters.

The producers’ claims this would be as big as Fahrenheit 9-11, and indeed even as big as Galileo and Copernicus, continue to be unfulfilled.