We Are Not So Smart

We Homo sapiens often like to champion ourselves as the most intelligent species. In fact by all known metrics of intelligence, we are. However as whole, our species doesn't act intelligent. Take Creationism for example. It is a sad indictment of the intelligence of our species when educated people who in other aspects of life are 'smart', yet still manage to accept something so vapid, so devoid of truth of which all evidence points to the contrary as true. This phenomena itself is clearly evidence of evolution. No intelligent creator would craft a brain that so easily deludes itself into believing things as stupid as creationism.

This doesn't mean I think all creationists are stupid though, they simply have a faulty brain. We all do. I once was a creationist because I was led to believe it as a child by adults who didn't know any better. When I learned more about it I rejected it, but for a number of years, I looked at the evidence and rejected it, opting instead for a position of faith. Some people may never end up giving up cretinous beliefs and it is sad to realise this. Humanity is not as smart as we delude ourselves to believe. Sometimes, some people are smart at some things, but in general, we are not so smart.

Critical Thinking and Statistics

I discovered as I was enrolling for my university courses for 2012 in December last year that I was missing a prerequisite course (statistics) for one of my first semester classes (ecology). I decided to enroll in summer school (I live in the southern hemisphere remember), and to make the most of it I took a philosophy course in critical thinking as well. I wasn't really thinking of the applications of these two disciplines when I enrolled in them, but once I started attending lectures I realised that these two areas of study are perhaps two of the most important things anyone can have a solid grounding in.

I'm not sure about highschools everywhere, but when I was in highschool, there was no philosophy (let alone logic or critical thinking) taught at all and statistics was an elective class one could opt to take in 6th form (age 16-17). I am almost certain that if everybody had at least some grounding in critical thinking and statistics as teenagers, society as a whole would be a more intelligent place. People would be better equipped to deflect bad arguments and to not be duped by deceptive statistics used frequently in marketing.

Good Old-Fashioned Christian Hate

I can't remember how, but I managed to stumble upon a video on YouTube posted by drcraigvideos. The video contained a clip from a radio show/podcast by the Christian apologist Frank Turek talking about 'angry atheists' leaving hateful comments on William Lane Craig debate videos. He said something that made me want to leave a comment. He said that he looked at the comments "to see what names were called, or were attributed to Craig and what names were attributed to Hitchens, in other words ad hominen [sic (Yes, he pronounced it hominen)] attacks, insults if you will." I left a comment pointing out that insults and ad hominem attacks were not the same thing. See for yourself what I got in response from drcraigvideos.

I actually thought he was using it as an example, I should have realised from the "3rd option" that he was actually just straight up insulting me. So it seems that this evangelical Christian is just as bad as the trolls who post inflammatory comments on his channel. In fact it's rather ironic that this video was about inflammatory comments, I left a serious comment, was insulted in return, and when I explained my initial comment further, I was insulted again. In fact I think drcraigvideos is even worse than the trolls, because he's a filthy hypocrite.

Just to clarify, the comment I left that is pending approval in the picture was intended to be sarcastic.

EDIT: It seems I'm not alone in my experience with this deplorable character. See here and here for more details.

EDIT 2: I have now been blocked by drcraigvideos. He must be scared of legitimate, civil criticism. What a disingenuous tool.

False Analogies

It generally annoys me when I hear people making comparisons between Jesus and other mythical deities, because most of the time, they make false analogies. The most common ones are what people learned from movies like Zeitgeist (which is horrible), and they make bold claims like "The Jesus story was copied directly from pagan religions!" and "All of these gods (10s or 100s of them) were born on December 25th of a virgin and when they died rose 3 days later!"

My biggest gripe with these faux arguments is that there ARE legitimate comparisons to be made. There are quite a number of dying and rising gods in ancient religions. There are a number of mythical man-god figures who were said to have been fathered by gods. There are also other figures who are ascribed many of the same kinds of miracles that Jesus did. These are the comparisons that should be made, and are made by people who know what's what. It isn't a black and white issue and the stories are not identical. I really wish people would stop speaking out their ass and treating movies like Zeitgeist and Religious as scholarly sources.

Fear-Mongering, Propaganda and Poor Journalism in the New Zealand Herald

An article in the New Zealand Herald today was brought to my attention via Facebook, and to say the least I was quite shocked. The title of the article was "Sex at 14 - I learned all about it in class" by Elizabeth Binning. It (kind of) tells the story of a teenager from the Hibiscus Coast (North of Auckland) who is pregnant at the age of 17. 'Big deal' so far right? My gripes with the piece started right from the title, and continued through just about every single sentence all the way to the end.

The "Journalist" Elizabeth Binning is pushing for an anti-Sex-Ed angle throughout the whole story, which already shows her colours. Comprehensive sex education is demonstrably the best way of reducing teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections. Abstinence-only education has proven to be a complete failure in the United States (Guardian) and has been ineffective in general (Wikipedia). People who push propaganda against teaching teenagers sexual and reproductive health are not only counter-productive but they are chewing away at the progress that has been made in many places.

Beyond the anti-sex-ed angle of the piece, it is very poorly written, and seems to indicate at one point in the article that the girl in question was raped. "I didn't wind up pregnant because I didn't attend a class. I know all about contraceptives and safe sex. It was purely the fact that I was drunk, it was New Year's, and some older male thought it would be fabulous to take advantage of me." But after emailing the editor expressing concern that the journalist didn't seem to care about the rape, an acquaintance of mine through my University feminist group received a reply that the girl was not raped, but rather that she was drunk and was deceived by the older male that 'pulling out' was an effective contraceptive method. Either way, it doesn't paint a very good picture of the man in question, and it would in my opinion have been much better to focus on that aspect of her story. I have heard it said that the general attitude towards rape in New Zealand is rather blasé, which I find extremely appalling. I believe our rape laws are in dire need of revision, but that is a discussion for another day.

Binning also quotes from this ignorant child as if she was an authority on the matter. No references to studies to back up what the girl is saying? No checking her story to see whether the health teacher at the school was actually getting kids to taste flavoured condoms? I don't know about you, but I'm simply not going to take the word of a 17 year old who got pregnant because she was lead to believed that 'pulling out' was an effective contraceptive method, when "She said teaching young teenagers about contraception won't help reduce New Zealand's high rate of teenage pregnancy rates." I'm sorry, but all the data goes the other way.

Here are some quotes from the article

"A pregnant teenager says sex education in schools does not prevent young people from having sex - if anything, it encourages it."

Really? Data please?

"Amber-Leigh has spoken out in the hope it may help other young teenagers to learn about the importance of having protected sex - or preferably waiting until they are older."

So how about educating them about contraception? I distinctly remember being told when I was 14 years old that "just pulling out doesn't work". Either she wasn't paying attention or her teacher was crap.

This article was not a one-off event either, recently Elizabeth Binning has written 4 "articles" with the same propaganda against sexual health education. Some of the others display even poorer journalistic integrity than the most recent one. Quoting from anonymous sources with no apparent fact-checking is indicative of at the very least an incompetent journalist, at worst someone pushing a dangerous agenda.
The titles of her other 3 articles are:

• Too much 'grubby stuff', so dad steps in - No sources mentioned, story is about a father whose 12 year old son was supposedly recommended to engage oral sex by his sex-ed teacher. I call absolute bull shit.
•  Sex ed shock for angry parents - "Children as young as 12 are being taught about oral sex and told it's acceptable to play with a girl's private parts as long as "she's okay with it"." I call Bull Shit!
• Readers up in arms over sex education - "children as young as 12 are being taught about anal and oral sex and ...Children as young as 11 are being taught how to put condoms on cucumbers, and in some schools 14-year-old girls are practising on black plastic penises.
In one, a female teacher went as far as to give her class of 15-year-olds a rendition of the noises she makes during orgasm." I call BULL SHIT!

No sources are attributed to any of those claims.

Top Ten Quackronyms

If you haven't figured it out, a Quackronym is an acronym for something related to Quackery of some sort.
Let's start at my number 10.

10. EVP - Electronic Voice Phenomena
This is something you see on those Ghost Hunter shows, where they claim the noise or interference picked up by their recording device comes from a paranormal source. The people who believe in this nonsense could learn a lesson or two from Scooby Doo.

9. EHF - Extraordinary Human Function

Skepdic says: "An extraordinary human function would be something like the ability to read messages with one's ears, forehead, fingers or some other part of the anatomy besides the eyes. There have even been accounts of reading by sitting on the message. The latter was popular in China in the late 1970's, when the study of EHF became a major research topic at Beijing University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences."

There's a little something called evidence, perhaps these folk should learn what it is.

8. ET - Extra Terrestrial
The reason ET's are so far down this list, is because there is a high probability that some form of life exists somewhere else in the universe. People who think aliens visit earth and that people get abducted by aliens are still crazy though. There is almost no chance that any alien life is close enough to visit earth. If however some alien race were visiting earth, I do not believe for one second they would be at all interested in abducting some of our least sane members of society.

7. DHEA - dehydroepiandrosterone
DHEA is a naturally occurring steroid produced in the adrenal gland. In fact DHEA is very abundant in the human body. However it has been marketed as a "miracle drug" by quack and quack alike, as a cure for everything ranging from auto-immune disorders to weight loss. Quackwatch has a good article on it.

6. NDE - Near Death Experience
Near Death Experiences are often touted as evidence for life after death. I have a few things to say to people who accept this as evidence: Oxygen deprivation, brain damage and hallucination. Here's a link for more information.

5. OBE - Out of Body Experience
I was tempted to combine this into a single category with NDE's, but they are also related to another piece of quackery that doesn't make a nice acronym: Astral Projection. Here's a link to a Michael Shermer video on the 'God Helmet' and Out of Body Experiences. Here's a link to another video about the same helmet. What is abundantly clear from the realistic explanations of these last 2 Quackronyms is that the Human Brain is highly susceptible to manipulation and hallucination. Anyone who has taken some kind of hallucinogen knows this.

4. ESP - Extra Sensory Perception
Believers in ESP are probably either really gullible or Alien-abductee type crazy. No credible evidence has ever been produced for such phenomena, nor any mechanism suggested. Penn and Teller did an episode of 'Bullshit!' that featured an ESP class at a home-based Psychic School. It's good for a laugh.

3. MLM - Multi Level Marketing
Multi Level Marketing just makes me sad. Most of the people that get sucked into it are victims of a scam, plain and simple. They were most likely recruited by other people who  are most likely also victims of the same scam. The simple fact of the matter is that the overwhelming majority of people who try MLM do not make any money. They're not supposed to, it's simply a disguised pyramid scheme, the products they sell are only secondary to the recruitment. When you pay to sign up, the people higher up the pyramid make money.

2. YEC - Young Earth Creationism
I wanted to include Intelligent Design (ID) as another category, but then I would have had to remove one of my other list items, or make it a top 11, which just isn't cool (unless you're Spinal Tap). The reason Young Earth Creationism is so high up on this list (or low down if you prefer it that way) is because to be a YECer you literally have to deny just about all of the findings of science from the last 200 years. Creationists are Quacks of the highest calibre.

1. CAM - Complementary and Alternative Medicine
This blight upon humanity is at the number one spot for a very good reason. With the potential exception of DHEA, none of the other list members have the potential to do any physical harm beyond affecting the intelligence and sanity of the believer. Alternative medicine can cause serious harm, and in some cases result in death, as believers will of avoid getting real life-saving treatments for diseases. What really makes me furious though is that some parents make the choice on behalf of their children, like this Sydney couple who only gave their baby daughter homeopathic remedies and she died from septicaemia and malnutrition.

Demons and Devils

They don't exist, and to prove it I will write out my challenge to any evil (or good) spiritual entities online. When nothing happens, my point will have been proven.

I challenge any supernatural forces or spirits or anything to come prove your existence to me right now. I will worship the first one that appears, so Gods, Goddesses, fairies, Poltergeists, Demons, Devils, Angels, Djinns, whatever, have a race to prove your existence.

Some time later...

I actually feel a bit silly writing this, but nothing has happened. It just goes to show that either A) no conscious supernatural force exists or B) if one exists, it doesn't want us to know about it.

Argument from Ignorance

Another post about creationists sorry.. hehe.

I was bored this afternoon, so I was browsing through AiG looking for amusing things (I know, it's sad and pretty lame of me) and I stumbled upon this video called 'What is the Best Evidence God Created'. I had high hopes that they were going to have some great piece of evidence that proves the creation myth true once and for all. The first minute or so of the video was just the speaker talking about how he'd been preaching the truth about creation deceiving children for 20 years.
At 1:36 he said "You're able to look up into the heavens, they declare the glory of god".

...

Really? You make a video called 'What Is the Best Evidence God Created' and that's the first thing you mention? Sure, I realise that your speech was directed at people without any background in science, but come on, that's your best piece of evidence? It's not even evidence! It's just an outlandish claim, that because stars and planets exist, therefore god exists, and he it created them. That Mr. YEC is called a non sequitur.

Lets move on.

After giving the same old tired creationist argument for design about drawings in the sand, which has no bearing whatsoever on how the natural world works he brings up something new (*GASP* SOMETHING NEW ZOMG). He mentions the Weta, the New Zealand native insect. It is interesting to note that he doesn't verbally mention the fact that it is a New Zealand native, because this fact alone is evidence for evolution. 'Native species' are a product of geographical distribution, species that are separated for long periods of time evolve different characteristics to their predecessors, which is how 'native' species arise. It is no surprise then that he doesn't stay long about this detail of the weta. He moves on quickly to how amazing they are, and that they have been around for a long time. Then he mentions that there are many different varieties of Weta (evolution again....) and then says something about how the cave Weta can survive months of being 'frozen' up in the mountains and then boldly asserts "You tell me, how millions of years of random-chance processes is going to cause something like THAT to happen".

...

"You tell me, how millions of years of random-chance processes is going to cause something like THAT to happen".

...

This is what is known as an argument from ignorance. You can't get a clearer admission of it than this. This preacher deceiver knowingly admits that he believes the Weta was created because he can't think of how it could have happened otherwise. Not only does he admit the argument is based on his own ignorance, but he completely misunderstands how evolution by natural selection works, we know this by the way he says "random-chance processes". Anyone educated at all in the mechanisms of evolution know that it is not 'random chance'.

I stopped the video there, as I didn't need to hear any more of this guys 45 minute speech about evidence for creationism when his first two main arguments were based upon absurd logical fallacies, the first being a non sequitur and the second being an argument from ignorance.

The Problem With Contradictions.

What I really don't understand about the christian psyche, is how they can justify in their own minds the blatant errors and contradictions in their holy book. I've pointed out a few of them in previous posts so I won't discuss any of them here.
The first problem with contradictions is that if your book was authored by god, do you really think he would make so many screw-ups in the book? I think not.
If you concede the point that god didn't author it, but it was written by men who were inspired by god. That leaves you with the problem of why god would inspire them to be wrong.
If you concede a further point (as some christians do) that it was merely written by men, then how is it supposed to be a 'guidebook to life' or anything remotely useful in the slightest. We're talking about a compilation of bronze age scribblings that were handed down over about a millennium, not written by contemporaries of the events in most cases, containing screeds of errors and contradictions, immoral teachings in some parts, contradictorily good moral teachings in others and compiled into one book during the reign of a roman emperor who used christianity to control his people.
That is your holy book. I really do not see the value in it at all, or why you insist to preach to people about how good and relevant it is.

Biblical Contradictions

When I was a christian, I constantly heard about these 'contradictions' in the bible, and I either completely ignored the claims (as I imagine many still do) or I searched for some explanation as to why the contradiction was there.
After reading The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine, I saw these contradictions in a new light, that they were apparent, obvious and irreconcilable. One of the most acute contradictions are the conflicting genealogies of Jesus found in the New Testament.

The account in Matthew goes as follows (from christ back to David):
Christ, Joseph, Jacob, Matthan, Eleazer, Eliud, Achim, Sadoc, Azor, Eliakim, Abiud, Zorobabel, Salathiel, Jechonias, Josias, Amon, Manasses, Ezekias, Achaz, Joatham, Ozias, Joram, Josaphat, Asa, Abia, Roboam, Solomon, David. That is 28 generations in total.

The account in Luke is rather different, and is as follows:
Christ, Joseph, Heli, Matthat, Levi, Melchl, Janna, Joseph, Mattathias, Amos, Naum, Esli, Nagge, Maath, Mattathis, Semei, Joseph, Juda, Joanna, Rhesa, Zorobabel, Salathiel, Neri, Melchi, Addi, Cosam, Elmodam, Er, Jose, Eliezer, Jorim, Matthat, Levi, Simeon, Juda, Joseph, Jonan, Eliakim, Melea, Menan, Mattatha, Nathan, David.

Thomas Paine postulates that if Jesus' natural genealogy was 'invented' as it most certainly was (shown by the conflicting accounts), we then have no reason not to suppose that his divine genealogy was also invented, in simpleton terms, that he was not the son of god.

This kind of reason I found very intriguing because it uses the bible to prove christianity wrong.

Relativism

Something that also really annoys me is the idea of relativism. Whether it be religious relativism, ethical relativism or some other kind or spiritual cultural shenanigan. It's stupid!

Well perhaps relativism isn't exactly the right word, and perhaps it's only the religious side that I hate.

Anyway... The idea that "what works for you is good" is one of the stupidest ideas ever. When it comes to something like religion which makes claims about the nature of the world and how things work and why, if you're wrong, you're wrong. Simple as that. If you say that the world is flat, you're wrong, and chances are your whole religion is wrong, which means that it doesn't "work" for anybody.

I'll try and put it clearer. You can NOT have it both ways, you can't say "whatever works for you" and then plough ahead and make preposterous claims about the world and the universe. Now some people don't accept relativism and I respect that, even if you believe some ridiculous things like reincarnation, ESP, psychics, nirvana, 6000 year old universes, evil vegetables or unclean pigs.

I'll have to think some more to decide whether or not this applies to other kinds of relativism.