Skeptico

Hitchens – God Not Great

I generally like Christopher Hitchens. I don’t  agree with everything says – his strange view on the Iraq war (he was in favor of it) being one area I disagree. But I like most of what he writes, especially when he writes about religion. He has a new book out - God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, with excerpts this week in Slate:

…there is a real and serious difference between me and my religious friends, and the real and serious friends are sufficiently honest to admit it. I would be quite content to go to their children's bar mitzvahs, to marvel at their Gothic cathedrals, to "respect" their belief that the Koran was dictated, though exclusively in Arabic, to an illiterate merchant, or to interest myself in Wicca and Hindu and Jain consolations. And as it happens, I will continue to do this without insisting on the polite reciprocal condition—which is that they in turn leave me alone. But this, religion is ultimately incapable of doing. As I write these words, and as you read them, people of faith are in their different ways planning your and my destruction, and the destruction of all the hard-won human attainments that I have touched upon. Religion poisons everything.

On how Islam is based on the same shaky grounds as most other religions:

… Islam when examined is not much more than a rather obvious and ill-arranged set of plagiarisms, helping itself from earlier books and traditions as occasion appeared to require. Thus, far from being "born in the clear light of history," as Ernest Renan so generously phrased it, Islam in its origins is just as shady and approximate as those from which it took its borrowings. It makes immense claims for itself, invokes prostrate submission or "surrender" as a maxim to its adherents, and demands deference and respect from nonbelievers into the bargain. There is nothing—absolutely nothing—in its teachings that can even begin to justify such arrogance and presumption.

Hitchens then goes into more detail about how the Koran was written many years after the death of the prophet, with the problems of its provenance this raises. I hope he has good bodyguards.

And then, hilariously, on the problems with Joseph Smith and the Mormons.

The actual story of the imposture is almost embarrassing to read, and almost embarrassingly easy to uncover. […] In brief, Joseph Smith announced that he had been visited (three times, as is customary) by an angel named Moroni. The said angel informed him of a book, "written upon gold plates," which explained the origins of those living on the North American continent as well as the truths of the gospel. There were, further, two magic stones, set in the twin breastplates Urim and Thummim of the Old Testament, that would enable Smith himself to translate the aforesaid book.

[…]

A scribe was therefore necessary to take his inspired dictation. This scribe was at first his wife Emma and then, when more hands were necessary, a luckless neighbor named Martin Harris. Hearing Smith cite the words of Isaiah 29, verses 11–12, concerning the repeated injunction to "Read," Harris mortgaged his farm to help in the task and moved in with the Smiths. He sat on one side of a blanket hung across the kitchen, and Smith sat on the other with his translation stones, intoning through the blanket. As if to make this an even happier scene, Harris was warned that if he tried to glimpse the plates, or look at the prophet, he would be struck dead.

Mrs. Harris was having none of this, and was already furious with the fecklessness of her husband. She stole the first hundred and sixteen pages and challenged Smith to reproduce them, as presumably—given his power of revelation—he could. (Determined women like this appear far too seldom in the history of religion.) After a very bad few weeks, the ingenious Smith countered with another revelation. He could not replicate the original, which might be in the devil's hands by now and open to a "satanic verses" interpretation. But the all-foreseeing Lord had meanwhile furnished some smaller plates, indeed the very plates of Nephi, which told a fairly similar tale. With infinite labor, the translation was resumed, with new scriveners behind the blanket as occasion demanded, and when it was completed all the original golden plates were transported to heaven, where apparently they remain to this day.

And grown people believe in this.

Hitchens' book sounds like it would be a good read.

59th Skeptics’ Circle

From the desk of your friendly neighborhood fecal projectile technician – Pooflingers Anonymous - comes the 59^th Skeptics' Circle. Click the link for the best skeptical blogging from the last two weeks. 

Collective Nouns

See Randi’s list today of collective nouns for woosters. My favorite, “a drawer of spoonbenders,” although “a saucer of UFO abductees/believers” is also pretty good. Click the link for the full list.

I suggested “a closet of Secretards”. Feel free to make up better ones.

Apologies for the absence

Apologies for my three day unexpected absence. Normally this would not have mattered, but (as I have written before), due to the disruptive actions of a few Secretards, I have imposed comment moderation. So apologies to all whose comments were delayed – everything has now been approved and normal service has been resumed.

Having said that, the latest lame regurgitations of the same Secretard arguments have not been impressive. They even including the highly unoriginal “You once thought the world was flat” – yes that oft debunked argument was actually used AGAIN, (despite being specifically referred to as a lame argument in the Comment Guidelines - you’ll find it under The appeal to “science doesn’t know everything”).

Considering the continued paucity of valid arguments from the Secretard groups I’ll soon be closing the comments to all Secret posts. I’ll leave them open for another week or two, just to see if anyone can come up with anything new or original (so LAST CHANCE), but as it stands the lame Secretard responses are not adding anything of value to anyone.

You heard it first here

Well, you heard it here nearly five weeks ago, anyway. Via Pharyngula I learn that the Lost Tomb of Jesus film scholars are backtracking on the claims made in the film.

First, the statistician who was quoted giving the 600 to 1 odds that this really was Jesus’ tomb (ie that Jesus), has clarified what he really meant:

The most startling change of opinion featured in the 16-page paper is that of University of Toronto statistician Professor Andrey Feuerverger, who stated those 600 to one odds in the film. Feuerverger now says that these referred to the probability of a cluster of such names appearing together.

Pfann's paper reported that a statement on the Discovery Channel's Web site, which previously read "a statistical study commissioned by the broadcasters...concludes that the probability factor is 600 to 1 in favor of this being the tomb of Jesus of Nazareth and his family," in keeping with Feuerverger's statement, has been altered and now reads, "a statistical study commissioned by the broadcasters... concludes that the probability factor is in the order of 600 to 1 that an equally 'surprising' cluster of names would arise purely by chance under given assumptions." [My bold.]

As I wrote in March, the 1 in 600 probability is not 1 in 600 that this is the tomb of Jesus. It is a 1 in 600 probability that there would be a tomb with these exact four names, or an even closer match to Jesus’ family, in one of the 1,000 tombs found so far.

The DNA scientist quoted in the film is also backtracking:

Dr. Carney Matheson, who supervised DNA testing carried out for the film from the supposed Jesus and Mary Magdalene ossuaries, and who said in the documentary that "these two individuals, if they were unrelated, would most likely be husband and wife," later said that "the only conclusions we made were that these two sets were not maternally related. To me, it sounds like absolutely nothing."

Well Duh. As I wrote, she doesn’t have to be Yeshua’s wife. She could be the wife of one of the other three named men, or of any man in one of the four unnamed ossuaries, or the daughter of any of the other nine in the tomb.

And finally, the experts who interpreted the text on the ossuaries is also backtracking:

…a specialist in ancient apocryphal text, Professor Francois Bovon, who is quoted in the film as saying the enigmatic ossuary inscription "Mariamne" is the same woman known as Mary Magdalene - one of the filmmakers' critical arguments - issued a disclaimer stating that he did not believe that "Mariamne" stood for Mary of Magdalene at all.

So it’s the lost tomb of no-one special.

58th Skeptics’ Circle

The 58^th Skeptics' Circle has just been posted at Geek Counterpoint. Click the link for the best skeptical blogging from the last two weeks.

Edited to add:

I especially like Conspiracy Factory’s take on genetically modified organisms, and recommend his follow up post A GM-food primer. Not all GM-foods are created equal...

Pope Ratzo – back to the good old days

Pope Ratzinger spoke out against evolution yesterday in a new book that harkens back to the good old days – you know, when the Catholic Church denied Galileo’s heliocentric theory.

Benedict XVI, in his first extended reflections on evolution published as pope, says that Darwin's theory cannot be finally proven and that science has unnecessarily narrowed humanity's view of creation.

In a new book, "Creation and Evolution," published Wednesday in German, the pope praised progress gained by science, but cautioned that evolution raises philosophical questions science alone cannot answer.

Yes, science perhaps cannot answer some of the philosophical questions, but neither can religion. Religion thinks it answers those questions, but in reality it just makes stuff up and pretends these are the answers. This is just another lame appeal to other ways of knowing. 

Think the comparison to Galileo’s day is excessive? Check out how Catholic Answers justifies how they treated Galileo, and compare the wording with Ratzo’s yesterday:

Anti-Catholics often cite the Galileo case as an example of the Church refusing to abandon outdated or incorrect teaching, and clinging to a "tradition." They fail to realize that the judges who presided over Galileo’s case were not the only people who held to a geocentric view of the universe. It was the received view among scientists at the time.

[…]

Many people wrongly believe Galileo proved heliocentricity. He could not answer the strongest argument against it, which had been made nearly two thousand years earlier by Aristotle: If heliocentrism were true, then there would be observable parallax shifts in the stars’ positions as the earth moved in its orbit around the sun. However, given the technology of Galileo’s time, no such shifts in their positions could be observed. […]

Thus Galileo did not prove the theory by the Aristotelian standards of science in his day.

Of course, science doesn’t “prove” theories, but where the evidence is overwhelming, a theory is given pretty strong provisional acceptance. The evidence for the heliocentric theory was good, the Catholic Church just didn’t want to hear it since it conflicted with what was written in their magic book. Make no mistake, if they could suppress evolution the way they were able to censor Galileo – they would. Ratzinger has shown where he would like to take his church if he could – back to the dark ages.

Comment Guidelines

I have just posted some guidelines for commenters. I threw it together pretty quickly this afternoon and will update and improve it over the coming weeks. I hope it will help people planning to post comments.

The main rule is – don’t be a jerk. Shouldn’t be too hard for most people, and you have to behave like a real jerk to get me to delete a post or ban you.

Comment Guidelines

The comments sections are for people to explore issues raised by the posts in more detail – to add additional information or references, and to cover things you think I missed or got wrong in my original post. Clearly this means many people will post disagreeing with what I have written, and will often disagree vigorously, and this is OK. Sometimes people may even be a little insulting or will use some bad language. This is understandable and OK to a point. But where the comments are just insulting without any content, and/or if the bad language is just gratuitous or excessively vulgar, the tone can be such that other people are discouraged from reading this blog. This is what I want to avoid.

With this in mind, please note the following list of things that will get your posts deleted and possibly get you banned from commenting. Where reasonable I will give warnings to violators before deleting posts and/or banning people.

Excessive Profanities

I realize that sometimes only a well placed F word will express how you really feel – just don’t go overboard. Where I consider profanities to be gratuitous or excessive, or where the noise to signal ratio is too high, I will delete posts.

Off Topic

Please stick to the topic of the original post. Comments that are wildly off-topic may be deleted.

Posting Names and Sock Puppets

Please use a name in the “Name” box. It doesn’t have to be your real name but please use the same name each time you post a comment. Anyone I find using sock puppets – posting different comments under different names – will be instantly  banned. You don’t have to validate with an email address.

Copy and Paste

Please do not copy and paste massive amounts of screed, and especially don’t do this implying it is your own work. Copy a few paragraphs if you want with a link to the full article.

Signal to Noise Ratio

I understand that sometimes you wish to post insults about another commenter – just make sure please that the majority of what you post is reasoned argument, reasonable questions to another commenter, citations, answers to questions etc. If people read paragraph after paragraph of just personal insults they will likely be driven away.

Please note, I will be extremely flexible and easy going in applying these rules. I don’t want to put people off commenting and I especially don’t want dissenters or non-skeptics to feel they can’t post exactly how they feel. But only post comments please if you are actually interested in reasoned debate, or in imparting some valid information about the subject in hand. The overriding rule is simple – don’t be a jerk. If you honestly follow that rule there will be no problem.

Fallacies

While the above might be considered “rules”, there follows a summary of fallacious arguments we have all heard before -  arguments that you might like to avoid using. Please read the following summary of fallacious arguments – read the more detailed explanations at the links – and unless you can explain why these are not fallacies, expect to be ridiculed if you use any of these arguments. Up to you of course.

In no particular order, you should try avoiding the following:

The appeal to be open-minded

The really lame fallback of the non-skeptic. An open mind is open to all ideas, but it must be open to the possibility that the idea could be true or false. It is not closed-minded to reject claims that make no sense, but if you can’t accept the possibility that an idea might be false, then you are the closed minded one.

The appeal to other ways of knowing

An example of this would be to claim that alternative medicine can’t be tested by science. Science has proved to be the most reliable method we know for evaluating claims and figuring out how the universe works. If the you claim there is a better method, it is up to you to describe that better method and explain why it is better.

The appeal to “science doesn’t know everything”

This would include, for example, pointing out that that for hundreds of years nobody could prove the presence of atoms, electricity or radio waves, or that people used to think the Earth was flat. Of course, these things are true and science doesn’t know everything, but the corollary is not that any idea you like the sound of, that cannot be proven false, is worthy of consideration. Something is only worthy of consideration if there is a reason to suppose it is true. So please provide one.

The appeal to “science was wrong before”

This argument will be to point out previous errors in science, as if that justified your claim. Of course science is sometimes wrong, but science has proven the most reliable method we know for evaluating claims and figuring out how the universe works. This argument is just a smoke screen to disguise the fact that the you have no evidence for your claim.

Ad Hominem

Not a mere insult, as most people think. It means attacking the motives or qualifications of the person making the claim, rather than the evidence they present for their claim. Examples would be to call someone a “Pharma Shill” to indicate they were perhaps being paid by the pharmaceutical companies to write what they are writing. The motives of the person making the argument are irrelevant; only the data are important. You need to show exactly what is wrong with the actual data.

Equivocation

This is when you use the same word in different meanings in an argument, implying that the word means the same each time. For example, someone asserts that I have “faith” in science, and then implies this is the same as religious faith. Obviously they are different.

Appeals to Quantum Mechanics

Please don’t bother telling us that if only we understood quantum mechanics we’d know that your brand of woo is real. First, several people who comment here regularly understand QM fairly well and will quickly expose your ignorance. Second, and more importantly, you will need to explain exactly how QM proves your point. And citing What The Bleep Do We Know as a reference will not cut it.

Appeals to personal experience

There is a reason that randomized double-blind studies are used to determine the efficacy of therapies – personal experience is unreliable. Please don’t tell us that your woo therapy worked because you felt better just after you were treated, unless you can explain why the improvement you experienced could not possibly be due to one of the following:

1. Placebo
2. Temporary mood improvements due to the personal nature of the treatment
3. Psychological investment of the patient in the success of the therapy
4. Misdirection
5. Incorrect diagnosis to start with
6. The cyclical nature of the illness (gets worse/gets better/gets worse/gets better…)
7. Other medicines the patient is taking
8. The illness just goes away by itself.
9. Release of endorphins (mainly with acupuncture)

Also, please see this list or this list of additional fallacious arguments to avoid, as well as this list of Doggerell to avoid. Trust me, we have heard and debunked all these arguments more times than we like to remember. So unless you can explain why these arguments are not fallacious, you might want to avoid using them and embarrassing yourself.

I will amend and update this page as I see fit.

Note

The comments to this post are open for people to comment on the comment policy – ie for people to say what they like/dislike about the comment policy, and perhaps make suggestions for changes/new items.

For some reason, several people have apparently decided the comments to this post are open for a general whine about skeptics, and/or whine about your favorite subject and/or to prove that they can break the “don’t be a jerk” rule and/or break other rules in the actual post where the rules are stated. I’m not going to try to speculate why it is that woos who visit this site are especially stupid and juvenile with so little of actual substance to say. Life is too short. But I will emphasize that on this post especially I will be enforcing the rules stated above. Especially the “don’t post off topic” and the “don’t be a jerk” rules. The reasons are explained in detail above and I am not going to bother to repeat them.  If you want to rant freestyle and post any drivel on any topic on the internet - get your own blog.

If people continue, despite this warning, to ignore my requests to stay on topic etc, I will implement comment moderation again.

Act of God?

God has such a sense of humor:

Crowds lined the pews and aisles, the incense and choir voices filled the air, but a distinct voice was missing on Easter Sunday in Chicago's Holy Name Catholic Cathedral. Cardinal Francis George, who has presided over the holiday masses each year since 1997, was home nursing an injury suffered in a fall Saturday.

[snip]

On Saturday, while blessing Easter baskets at a Northwest Side church, the cardinal slipped on holy water that he had sprinkled on the church's marble floor, falling on his hip and fracturing the top of his right femur. [My bold.]

And winning the week’s irony award.