Relaunched and Rebranded: Introducing Skeptical Sundays

So it’s been a while since I wrote…well, anything here, much less a Secular Sunday post. I’m hoping to get back in the groove of things, but as I do, I wanted to put a new face on it. 

A few commenters have made the point that my focus with Secular Sundays has been a little bit narrow, and having taken some time away, I have to agree. I want to broaden the focus out from religious nonsense, to encompass all manner of weird and unsubstantiated claims and beliefs. Secular Sunday doesn’t encompass UFOs, or homeopathy, or 2012 predictions, or the Zeitgeist movement, and I want to be able to talk about all that and more as it comes up. 

Additionally, I’ve determined — like others before me — that I don’t wish to be defined solely by what I don’t believe. “Atheist” implies that “theist” is a baseline from which one deviates (when in fact the reverse is true, we are all born without god-belief and must have it taught to us), and only expresses one particular claim I do not currently accept. Instead, I prefer to define myself by something I do hold to be true: I am a skeptic. 

Being a skeptic doesn’t mean doubting everything and never holding a solid belief, as seems to be the popular connotation (weirdly, the same connotation is applied to the word “agnostic” and in neither case is it appropriate). What it means is that I have a certain standard of evidence that must be met before I will accept a claim as true — and, more importantly, I apply this standard consistently across all aspects of life. I cannot accept a claim just because I would like it to be true, and I cannot dismiss a claim just because I would not. The claim must stand or fall on its own merits. 

I considered rebranding this to “Scientific Sundays,” as usually an unsupported claim crumbles when confronted with science and so there’d be a lot of that. I also want to be able to post about scientific discoveries that have nothing to do with debunking false claims — other than the fact that every success of science proves the efficacy of the scientific method, and implicitly debunks any claim that the scientific method is empty or unreliable. Not being a scientist, however, I feel that calling it “Scientific Sundays” would be hubris on my part. 

So, the best catch-all name that maintains the alliteration on which I’ve become fixated is “Skeptical Sundays.” 

To kick things off, I wanted to share this video of scientist Richard Feynman, expressing, with elegance, the rational view of the universe.

More to come!

Secular Sunday: Miscellany

So Chapter 4 of CFAC apparently sets the stage for the rest of the book. Having read Chapter 4, I feel that I actually have to finish reading the book before I can continue addressing it. I don’t want to spend a bunch of time addressing the misconceptions, falsehoods and fabrications of Chapter 4 if they’re just going to be repeated and expanded upon in subsequent chapters. But I also don’t want to skip over them and discover that they don’t come up again and went unaddressed. So I’m just gonna have to buckle down and plow through the thing before continuing the dissection. 

In the meantime, a major scientific discovery took place a couple of weeks ago and went unmentioned here: scientists were able to get RNA to form by natural processes through fundamental chemistry — in other words, they’ve gotten a step closer to confirming abiogenesis as not only the plausible, but most probable explanation for the origin of life on this planet. 

I really don’t know what else to say about the article. It’s well-covered and responsibly reported — unlike the “missing link” that was being trumpeted all over the place, which while an important fossil was not as important as many articles like the one linked here made it out to be. 

“Researchers say proof of this transitional species finally confirms Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution”? Any researchers saying that are idiots. Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection has been confirmed countless times by countless fossils and findings. The entire field of modern medicine wouldn’t work unless evolution were a fact of life. So while this fossil is another piece of the puzzle, it doesn’t confirm evolution any more or less than the other millions of fossils we’ve found over the last century, and it’s certainly not the missing link between humans and other primates. It’s the missing link between primates, of which humans are one sort, and other mammalian creatures such as lemurs.

The so called “missing link” that the anti-evolutionist crowd demand science produce would be a younger fossil showing the biological moment at which, or right before, the family Hominidae branched off from the others of the primate order. However, this find is still significant because even though scientists did not know about this before, the theory of evolution predicted that such a thing did exist. This is why evolution is science and creationism, in all its forms including so-called design theory, is not. One can actually make verifiable predictions, whereas the other can only make post-dictions and say “this still doesn’t necessarily contradict us!”

Last bit of ephemera on this point, the article in New Scientist “Christians battle each other over evolution.” The Dishonesty Institute has launched a shiny new site and filled it with all the same rusty old arguments, but the interesting part is that they’ve dropped any pretense of reconciling science and religion. They have just flatly stated that you must either reject evolution, or reject religion (specifically Christianity).

This will probably come as news to a lot of liberal Christians — not to mention the Catholic Church — who accept evolution as a fact of life and not contradictory with their faith. As Bill Maher says “If you get [sick] and you don’t believe in evolution, you don’t get to take medicine. You have to pray it away.” 

But of course, all the people who complain about Big Science are perfectly happy to reap its benefits every day of the week. As long as they insist on this hypocrisy, I’ll have plenty to write about on Sundays (and maybe even other days of the week).

Secular Sunday: Freethought IRL!

So no post today. (Er, besides this one.) Finishing up a script for entry into the Nicholl Fellowship^[1] is taking most of my writing energy.

I did, however, manage to make it out to the Festival of Books at UCLA this morning, and came by the booth for Atheists United. It’s an organization that I joined toward the end of last year but, life being what it is, I haven’t had a chance to get involved or attend any meetings. It’s mostly an educational/community building organization, but they get involved in the occasional activism regarding civil liberties and the separation of church and state.

I showed up at the booth just as a Christian decided he wanted to present the moral argument for God, a fifteen minute conversation that you know I dove into headfirst. After talking himself in circles endlessly (first “we can have total knowledge” then “we can’t know anything for sure” then “we know God’s nature” then “God’s nature is beyond our comprehension” etc.), and attempting false equivalencies (saying that morality = mathematics, there is either right or wrong), he said someone was waiting for him and scurried off.

I introduced myself to the booth folks as an AU member and, having checked out most of the Festival already and paid for a full day of parking, I availed myself as a volunteer to man the booth for a few hours.

I won’t lie, I was kind of hoping for more debate opportunities, but surprisingly enough, after that first guy, the people who came to the booth were very friendly, and mostly atheists glad to see an organization of like-minded individuals (which is, after all, the point).

They’re looking for ways to do more social outreach, including resurrecting a radio show they apparently used to do (!!), so I might be getting more involved in the future. We’ll see. For today it was fun and I met some cool people.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a script to finish.

---

1. Coworker: Is it really a “Nicholl” type of script?
   Me: It’s the closest I’ve got, at least. ↩

Secular Sunday: Case for a Creator, Chapter 4

I finally could no longer continue putting this off, so here we are. 

Getting through a chapter per post is pretty much out the window at this point. Creationist arguments are kind of like oil slicks. They take only seconds to occur but can take exponentially more time to clean up.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, I can save you the time of reading this post with the following: 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But unfortunately, I can’t just leave it there, lest I open myself up to accusations of attempting to dodge the issue because I have no genuine response. And worse, someone may assume that just because I don’t know the answer, science doesn’t have an answer. 

Two of those people, clearly, are Lee Strobel and the subject of this chapter’s interview, Stephen C. Meyer, Ph.D. (Emphasis technically mine, but you know Strobel wants you to notice.) If FACEPALM wasn’t enough, most of this chapter I have already addressed, and can address with the restatement of the simple phrase Science Doesn’t Work That Way. But again, I wouldn’t want to be accused of dodging the issue, even when the issue is blatant, professional-grade ignorance/stupidity. 

Secular Sunday: What Sacrifice?

Today is Easter Sunday. The holiday when Christians celebrate being forgiven for something that a just god wouldn’t hold them responsible for in the first place. 

Ignoring the injustice of the notion of sin in general, and original sin in particular; ignoring the injustice of eternal punishment for temporal crimes; ignoring the immorality and barbarism of requiring blood and sacrifice to atone for any wrongdoing big or small; pretending for a moment that all of these things make any kind of sense, let’s focus in on what folks are celebrating this weekend: the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. 

So the big deal is that God sent his son (who was also God) to sacrifice himself for the good of mankind. We’re supposed to kneel in gratitude at the feet of the ultimate sacrifice. 

And my question, as I’ve already alluded to, is: what sacrifice?

Secular Sunday: Open-Mindedness

I had intended to do a CFAC post today. I honestly did. But this video on YouTube came to my attention and I thought it just had to get posted. It pertains to some recent conversations in the comment threads, and also sets the stage for (and even somewhat summarizes) my objections to Chapter 4. 

(via JREF)

Secular Sunday: This I Believe(d)

With this being my birthday weekend, my gift to myself is once again not having to read CFAC. I thought instead I would go back to a pre-blog journal that I wrote when I was still a devout believer, and post a few segments of what I used to believe and express. 

I have to say, I kind of wish I’d read CFAC instead. I find some of the things I said to be truly alarming, drawing comfort only from the knowledge that I eventually pulled my head out of my ass. 

But let’s not be coy, let’s dive in. 

Secular Sunday: Won’t somebody think of the children?

No CFAC today. I’m sick and I don’t have the strength, so I’ll talk really briefly about a recent news story. 

It can really be summarized in two sentences, and conveniently they are the heading and subheading of this MSNBC article. 

Headline: Brazil girl, alleged rape victim, aborts twins

Subheading: The procedure on the 9-year-old girl draws complaints from Catholic church

That really just says it all, doesn’t it?

A 9-year-old Brazilian girl was raped by her stepfather and became pregnant with twins. Every medical professional who got involved determined that she was physically incapable of carrying the fetuses to term, much less deliver them. Her attempts to do so would result not only in her death, but the death of the offspring as well. 

So basically you have a test case in abortion rights that meets all the criteria of having a “good reason” to have an abortion. Rape victim, health of the mother at risk, fetuses aren’t ultimately viable. 

And so of course, because the Catholic Church loves dogma and hates people, they denounce the procedure. They denounce it so strongly that they excommunicated everyone involved in the abortion — except for the child and, of course, the rapist stepfather.

And lest you try to fool yourself into thinking it was a rogue bishop in Brazil, the Vatican has his back. 

I’m glad they excommunicated them. Maybe the people who have been excommunicated will realize that it was a shitty club to be a part of in the first place. And maybe the Catholic Church will excommunicate so many people that it will only accelerate its own irrelevance. But the fact that the Church can dare to get indignant over a necessary procedure to save a little girl’s life — well, that gives the lie to “pro-life” right there.  

These so-called “pro-life” people seriously put fetuses before children. A fetus, they say, is a “potential person.” But once they become an actual person, fuck ‘em, apparently.

A culture of life? A religion of compassion? Yeah, right.

Secular Sunday: Case for a Creator: Chapter 3, Part 5

I’m sure that you have all seen this image: 

The image has been reprinted, parodied, and has otherwise become so ingrained in the public consciousness that people think that this is an accurate representation of the theory of evolution. 

I honestly think that this single image has done more damage to scientific progress — not just evolutionary theory, but science — than almost anything else. With the exception, of course, of religious dogmas. 

 

 

Secular Sunday: “Intelligent” Design and the Evolution of Whales

Almost done with Chapter Three of Case for a Creator, but before finishing it out I want to go back to something that I wanted to spend more time on last time I posted. I had to kind of brush over it because I wanted to get more of the book done, but it’s important to address both for the previous discussion of common descent, and for the following and closing discussion of “transitionary fossils.” These two concepts are closely intertwined, so it’s important to understand what they mean and why they are accepted as fact by people who actually look into them.

Going back to something Wells said, that I touched on briefly last time:

“[Homology] is just as compatible with common design as it is with common ancestry. A designer may very well decide to use common building materials to create different organisms, just as builders use the same materials — steel girders, rivets, and so forth — to build different bridges that end up looking very dissimilar from one another.” [page 55]

Let’s look at some steel bridges.