Satan’s Garden

Creationist arguments are becoming more and more stupid with every pass.  Just when you thought you’ve heard it all, they come up with yet another massively moronic attempt to condemn evolutionary theory using utterly junk science.  This is a perfect example, with so much wrong in its understanding of the theories of the origins of life that it would take months to explain it all to them.

A special thanks to irReligion.org for finding this one.

On another board I got into an argument with a group of Christians who claim that there is no problem with mixing science and religion. The Big Bang could have happened by the instigation of God and science should not have issue with this. Furthermore, it is counterproductive to invoke argument between science and religion, as it may have the effect of turning away the more dogmatically religious, further widening the gap between religion and science.

After reading the various arguments to this extent, I felt myself slipping into the Twilight Zone, unable to understand how it was that a naturalistic system (science) could even begin to add on a supernatural system (God), without corrupting the very nature of science itself. No political persuasion should change this dynamic, as far as I’m concerned.

For this, I was labeled a confrontational “New Atheist”, as if it was somehow worse than being an “Old Atheist”.

Frankly, I wasn’t familiar with the term, I had to look it up. I still haven’t figured out who coined the phrase, but it is a label for those like Richard Dawkins, who feel that not only should science be separated from religion completely, but science should challenge religion for the superstitious nonsense that it is. At first being labeled a “New Atheist” left me feeling confused over the implications, but now that I understand the meaning behind it: I accept the label and thank all you deluded Christians for it! I’m quite happy to be thrown into this new class.

You cannot mix science and religion. The reason is a very simple one (one that those I was in argument with refused to accept as even a possibility) that once you apply any supernatural entity, no matter how petty or large, into a naturalistic system - you have corrupted the system. Science is ruled by evidence and there is no evidence for gods, pixies, unicorns, flying spaghetti monsters, or honest politicians. Once you open the door to that without evidence, you have thrown out science and taken on philosophy. The scientific method starts with observation of the empirical, not mental musings of the ethereal.

Until it can be shown that the interjection of the supernatural into a naturalist system can occur, without corrupting the naturalistic system, there simply is no room for it.  Inserting supernatural answers into a naturalistic system is far more than just being counterproductive - it destroys the system.

I have had many tell me that my “love” of science is my largest downfall - that it leaves me overly skeptical and ignorant of the good that religion has brought to the world.  I counter with this simple test: compare what science has done for humanity in the last 200 years, with the entire history of religion on this planet.  Which has produced more, created more, improved more, furthered knowledge?  Which has ultimately done more for mankind?

Pray all you want, but science landed us on the moon.

June 30th was the 100th anniversary of the Tunguska blast in Siberia. (Google for “Tunguska Event” as there is far too much material to link here…) General estimates of the blast put it at 10 to 15 megatons (though some now argue 3 to 5 megatons), or about 1,000 times the Hiroshima detonation. 830 square miles of trees were flattened. Windows shattered 250 miles from the blast center. The fluctuations in air pressure were measured in England, thousands of miles away.

In short, it was one hell of a bang.

No crater was left behind, making it likely that it was a meteor or asteroid, maybe even a small comet burst in mid air.

The problem is, aside from tree damage, we have no physical evidence of the “object”, if there really was one. Basically, we don’t have a clue at this point, but it’s fun to speculate. You can certainly spend hours reading every take on it.

My take is simple: nature still has the last laugh.

Well, this is simply too funny for words. Al Gore has apparently changed some of his slide show to include Adam and Eve.

In the very same breath, he then continued to explain that according to his religious beliefs, this “rise of humans” was God’s creation of mankind — apparently 200,000 years ago.

I couldn’t take the man or his climate claims seriously before, but now it’s gone to utter fairy tales.

Well, it would appear that this winter has set some amazing records. This quote says it all:

The total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C — a value large enough to wipe out nearly all the warming recorded over the past 100 years. All in one year’s time. For all four sources, it’s the single fastest temperature change ever recorded, either up or down.

Time will tell if this trend continues, but I personally think with sunspot activity at a low, we stand a good chance of entering another “little ice-age”. If nothing else, it shows just how insignificant we are in the grand scheme of climate.

Bear in mind that the Church of Global Warming is currently in the process of renaming themselves to the Church of Global Climate Change, so that anything can be blamed on that miserable poison CO2. In any case, Russia could have used a little of the old church and China is battling the “coldest winter in 100 years.”

Lake Paliastomi froze over for the first time in 50 years and temperatures were set to drop as low as 67 F (55 C). As the article states, Georgia is a subtropical climate…

Of course the CGW or CGCC is going to say that one off incidents like these aren’t a data point against the global warming hype. Nevermind that the earth has always been going through an awful lot of climate change over the eons. Never mind that Earth was warming on average in the 19th and 20th centuries, before we started to pump CO2 into the atmosphere.

But anthropogenic global warming is a fact, because the CGW has a consensus, or so they say.

Pray tell, just what is consensus? It is popular opinion, not scientific fact. Science has held many such a consensus which was proven wrong in the end. What we need is hard data.

Proof to me that CO2 and climate have little to do with each other, comes from work from paleoclimatologists, who show us inconvenient facts, such as Carleton University Professor Tim Patterson’s testimony before the Commons Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development in Canada. (See article.)

“There is no meaningful correlation between CO2 levels and Earth’s temperature over this [geologic] time frame. In fact, when CO2 levels were over ten times higher than they are now, about 450 million years ago, the planet was in the depths of the absolute coldest period in the last half billion years.”

Or how about Catherine Brahic’s work in New Scientist (2007-05-17) where she showed in ice core samples the CO2 increase lags behind the temperature by roughly 800 years. Ergo, CO2 cannot possibly cause the temperature change. The same pattern, by studying ice core samples dating back 650,000 years, was confirmed by Holly Fretwell at the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC).

The fact of the mater is, that the IPCC is a political organization with a political agenda and though they claim to have a majority of climatologists behind their stance, more and more scientists who have never seen an oil company’s penny are coming out against their position, including some former members of the IPCC.

As for the IPCC itself, the truth came out recently about their position papers, especially the Fourth Assessment Report in 2007.

Even this “consensus” is looking weaker everyday.

Addendum 2008-02-11: Yet another article on a group of Canadian scientists who are convinced that the sun is the driving force in climate and are now seeking additional funding for better sun monitoring systems.

Professor Bob Carter, a researcher at the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University, presented an intriguing look at Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) theory in the scope of scientific method and in the process illuminates a slew of problems with the current AGW propaganda. This is taken from a presentation at the Annual Conference of the Australian Environmental Foundation on September 8th of this year, held in Melbourne.

The speech is shown here in four parts, for a total time of roughly 37 minutes.

As if the thick stream of lies out of Giuliani’s mouth could get an more inane than they have, the Associated Press shares this tidbit:

“If (there’s) something living on another planet and it’s bad and it comes over here, what would you do?” the boy asked.

Giuliani, grin on his face, said it was the first time he’s been asked about an intergalactic attack.

“Of all the things that can happen in this world, we’ll be prepared for that, yes we will. We’ll be prepared for anything that happens,” said Giuliani, who spent the day campaigning in key early voting state.

This reaction says several things…

1. Giuliani is clueless about the nature of space and the technological advancement that would be required for a species to actually reach Earth from another system. If they can get here, we’re at their mercy.
2. Real defense exists in his mind if we only say that “we’re prepared”.
3. Giuliani would rather make a blatant lie, steaming with propaganda, than to actually think for even a moment about a question asked.

None of these are flattering traits, to be certain.

In the meantime, an invading alien force has decided to spare the energy needed for particle and beam weapons and are flinging our own asteroids at the Earth using parasitic rockets, left over from 2,000 year old technology they bought at an intergalactic discount warehouse using expired Betelgeuse food stamps. Rudy is in his yard, prepared to knock the asteroids away with a baseball bat and a thick curtain of Star Wars defense system puffery.

UPDATE - 2007-10-29: Comet 17p/Holmes brightened by over 1 million times its previous magnitude in just 24 hours on Oct. 17th. The first wave of the attack is coming, Rudy! Get your bat ready. (Note for the humor impaired, this is ironic boutade.)

This is an amazing video covering a research group’s efforts with Bonobo apes. The human-like behavior of the Bonobos is striking and to some my be a little eerie. It’s worth a watch, in any case.

The Bonobo video can be found here.

I caught an episode of Nova on PBS tonight concerning Irish bog bodies and it had me a little more than irritated with the lack of logic I saw with various explanations as to the how’s and why’s.

Here’s what we know from the hard evidence at hand: the bodies found were of well to do individuals, who had manicured nails, styled hair, a good diet and other signs of wealth. They were found almost void of clothing. A few trinkets were found near the bodies, but not much. The bodies showed signs of torture and brutal deaths - from garrot strangulation, to an ax in the face while the victim was kneeling. One even showed signs of a knife wound to the chest that he tried to prevent with his arm, which was wounded in the process. The bodies showed signs of having been staked down in the bog with plant bindings, as not to float. Some of the bodies were hacked apart first, then staked down in the bog.

That’s the hard evidence we have. The soft evidence backing up various theories presented include some medieval writings (centuries after the fact) describing religious rituals and some work from Tacitus, speaking of various religious practices of the Celts. However, none of this soft evidence, this hearsay, has any backing by the hard evidence found.

In spite of this, the theories postulated by the various investigators on this show, all surrounded unproved ideas that the Celts viewed the bogs as a limbo between the after-world and the living world. (Not even Tacitus spoke of this, so I have no clue where they got this romantic crap from.) Theories of ritual torture and sacrifice of the the wealthy as a spiritual offering for the good of the tribe abound. It was a ritual to appease the gods. It was a ritual to bring good crops. It was part of a festival held in the region. On and on and blather and blather. Druid this and Celtic that. No evidence actually supports any of these postulations, but its the conjecture of the hour, repeated over and over again.

I have another theory about these bog bodies and I’m going to use a little common sense and only the hard evidence to support it.

They were murdered for their money.

Bogs are not a fun place to be in. They are dangerous if you don’t know the territory and how to navigate it - and they are a great place to hide things. Keeping this in mind, bogs would be a great place for a gang of thieves to hide in.

Roads often pass near these bogs, more often than not. None of the bog bodies found so far have shown signs of being poor or otherwise bad off - well manicured, hair done up with French pine pitch (obviously imported), et cetera.

Thieves don’t rob poor people, as the take usually sucks. Robbing wealthy people is risky, because if they can finger you, what law there is in the land will come down on you like a ton of bricks.

However, if you kill your wealthy victim and stake his body down in the bog, where no one can find it, then there is no risk that they are going to be able to summon any kind of retribution for the crime against you. What trinkets they had which might be identified by others, as a tribal symbol or identifying standard - or that which is just useless to you, you dump in the bog with the body. Keep the rest.

As for the torture, well, criminals have never been known to have a little sport with their captives, have they? (Note: that was sarcasm for the humor impaired.) A man showing wounds of an attempt to defend himself from a knife to the chest, doesn’t appear to be much of a willing religious sacrifice either.

No religion needed. No rituals involved. These people were sometimes bound and tortured, always murdered and the bodies were dumped in the bog - because no one was going to go digging around in there in an attempt to find them.

It’s a simple theory and it only has hard evidence to back it up - but perhaps I should just bow down to the experts and go with their unsupported Celtic ritual sacrifice ideas, instead of thinking rationally about this?

On second thought, I’ll stick with Occam’s Razor.