City Hall Come As You Are

"City Hall/I Believe/Malibu Nights", Tenacious D, Tenacious D
"Civilian Ways", Rancid, Let The Dominoes Fall
"Clampdown", The Clash, Story Of The Clash
"Clash City Rockers", The Clash, Story Of The Clash
"Close But No Cigar", Weird Al Yankovic, Straight Outta Lynwood
"Close To Me", The Get Up Kids, Before You Were Punk, Vol. 2
"Cocktails", Rancid, Life Won't Wait
"Coffee Mug", Descendents, Punk-O-Rama Vol. 2
"Cold Streets", MXPX, Panic
"Come As You Are", Nirvana, Nevermind

Historical Revisionists

This has become my new pet peeve. In America it seems to revolve around the idea that America is a Christian nation, besides all the evidence to the contrary. A new low has been crossed. One group is now intentionally making up phrases and attributing them to Founding Fathers. They have even admitted to doing so. This is beyond disgusting. These actions are called lying.

This was brought to my attention by the blog Computing Intelligence and his post entitled "Well, he could have said it...".

There is a recent article in the St. Petersburg Times over some new billboards in the area. The article, "Christian group's billboards denounce separation of church, state", contains the following comment from one of the activists, Terry Kemple, involved in making the billboards.

Others carry the same message but with fictional attribution, as with one billboard citing George Washington for the quote, "It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible."

"I don't believe there's a document in Washington's handwriting that has those words in that specific form," Kemple said. "However, if you look at Washington's quotes, including his farewell address, about the place of religion in the political sphere, there's no question he could have said those exact words."

I cannot find the words to express my utter disgust and contempt for people like Mr. Kemple. Not only is he lying, he knows he is lying.

Mr. Kemple's organization, Community Issues Council (of which Mr. Kemple is the only employee in Tampa), has this statement as one of their goals.

America's government was made only for people who are moral and religious.

Personally, I do not believe that lying is immoral in all situations. Fundamentalist Christians, like Mr. Kemple, always tell me otherwise. In this situation, lying to further one's personal agenda at the expense of others, I think Mr. Kemple is acting immoral. So by his own standards, Mr. Kemple needs to GTFO! Buh-bye, sayonara, adios, hasta luego, bon voyage, seriously get the fuck out of the United States now.

Discovery Institute and History

The Discovery Institute is a self described think tank. Yet it seems in a current article on their website, not a lot of thought was put into it. The article, "Jefferson's Support for Intelligent Design" is about what Thomas Jefferson would think about Intelligent Design and Evolution. It is also one big Appeal to Authority in attempt to get Intelligent Design (ID) taught in Public Schools.

I am citing Fair Use in the copying of the article.

This article is by Stephen C. Meyer and was first printed in the Boston Globe.

IN THE battle over how to teach evolution in public schools, Thomas Jefferson’s demand for a “separation between church and state’’ has been cited countless times.

This sentence is just factually incorrect. When the phrase "separation between church and state" is used, it has nothing to do with evolution. This is because evolution is not a religious idea. So there is no church.

Many argue that the controversial alternative to Darwinian evolution, intelligent design, is an exclusively religious idea and therefore cannot be discussed under the Constitution.

Not just "many", the courts ruled that intelligent design was a religious idea and not science. The judge further wrote that "ID is nothing less than the progeny of creationism." Kitzmiller v. Dover.

By invoking Jefferson’s principle of separation, many critics of intelligent design assume that this visionary Founding Father would agree with them.

Yes and no. They are saying he would agree that religion has no place in government and that includes public schools. His thoughts on creationism or ID are irrelevant to that point.

But would he? For too long, an aspect of Jefferson’s visionary thought has been ignored, hidden away as too uncomfortable for public discussion - his support for intelligent design.

So what? He could have believed anything he wanted. In fact, he was a deist and believed in a creator god. This god was nothing like the Christian God. Jefferson was a critic of all religions.

In 1823, when materialist evolutionary ideas had long been circulating,

I am stopping in mid sentence here. This is partially true. The idea of animals evolving had been around. The main idea at the time was Lamarckian Evolution. Lamarckism was the idea that an organism could pass on traits, it picked up during its life, to its offspring. The idea was that an animal could change itself and pass those changes to its offspring. This is markedly different than the current Theory of Evolution. The Theory of Evolution by means of Natural Selection was not introduced until 1859, 36 years after this letter was written and 33 years after Jefferson's death. Lamarck's work never had the support that Darwin's did and still does to this day. To say that evolution had been around is confusing the meaning of evolution and the Theory of Evolution. To do so with that purpose in mind is lying.

Jefferson wrote to John Adams and insisted that the scientific evidence of design in nature was clear: “I hold (without appeal to revelation) that when we take a view of the Universe, in its parts general or particular, it is impossible for the human mind not to perceive and feel a conviction of design, consummate skill, and indefinite power in every atom of its composition.’’ It was on empirical grounds, not religious ones, that he took this view.

Of course, it was empirical grounds. The evidence for Lamarckism was scant and it didn't satisfy the science community. It wasn't until Darwin's idea of Natural Selection in 1895, 36 years later, did Evolution have good evidence. It still took several years and many tests before Darwin's idea was accepted.

This is still an appeal to authority. So Jefferson did not agree with Lamarckism. So what? How does this help the argument for ID? Was Jefferson a scientist with knowledge of the current Theory of Evolution? Well, no, he couldn't be, as the current theory is nothing like the hypothesis of his time. So what does that mean? Absolutely nothing. Can anyone say what Jefferson would believe now, with a completely different view of evolution and the scientific support for it? No. All we can do is interpret the law as it is. Which was done in Kitzmiller v. Dover and ID was deemed a religious idea. Thus it can't be taught in school.

There is no reason to carry on with this article, but Stephen wrote a lot more.

Contemplating everything from the heavenly bodies down to the creaturely bodies of men and animals, he argued: “It is impossible, I say, for the human mind not to believe that there is, in all this, design, cause and effect, up to an ultimate cause, a fabricator of all things from matter and motion.’’

Again so what? Jefferson did not know of the current Theory of Evolution. Jefferson was not a scientist or naturalist (as they were called at the time). Jefferson was a politician, lawyer and a yeoman farmer (yes, he did some paleontology and archeology but that was not even close to the bulk of his life work).

The “ultimate cause’’ and “fabricator of all things’’ that Jefferson invoked was also responsible for the “design’’ of life’s endlessly diverse forms as well as the manifestly special endowments of human beings. Moreover, because the evidence of “Nature’s God’’ was publicly accessible to all and did not depend upon a special appeal to religious authority, Jefferson believed that it provided a basis in reason for the protection of individual liberty. Thus, the Declaration of Independence asserted that humans are “endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.’’

This is the same as his last comment. It is meaningless today. What does it matter what Jefferson thought of Lamarckism. Lamarckism has nothing to do with the current Theory of Evolution and Jefferson is not a scientist. What if my Senator, Jim Inhofe, came out and said something like, 'global warming is not real'. Oh wait, he did say something like that. Does that make it true? No, it is ignoring a mountain of evidence, which is just shameful. For Jefferson the evidence was not there, at least.

Of course, many people assume that Jefferson’s views, having been written before Darwin’s “Origin of Species,’’ are now scientifically obsolete.

Assume? How could they be up to date, when he didn't have the same information we do? That is like saying, we assume someone from the 1800's idea of 'we would never travel to the moon' as being obsolete. It isn't assumed, it is true.

But Jefferson has been vindicated by modern scientific discoveries that Darwin could not have anticipated. For example, in 1953 when Watson and Crick elucidated the structure of the DNA molecule, they made a startling discovery.

Actually, if you read On the Origin of Species, you would see that Darwin suggests that there is something in all living things that accounts for evolution. Darwin was so close to the idea of DNA. DNA just further solidified the Theory of Evolution.

The structure of DNA allows it to store information in the form of a four-character digital code. Strings of precisely sequenced chemicals called nucleotide bases store and transmit the assembly instructions - the information - for building the crucial protein molecules and machines the cell needs to survive. Francis Crick later developed this idea with his famous “sequence hypothesis,’’ according to which the chemical constituents in DNA function like letters in a written language or symbols in a computer code. As Bill Gates has noted, “DNA is like a computer program, but far, far more advanced than any software we’ve ever created.’’

Look, another appeal to authority. Bill Gates does not have a degree in molecular biology or any biology. His ideas on DNA are just from what he has picked up as a lay person and are meaningless. In fact that is not exactly what Gates said. This is called a quote mine. Here is Bill Gates quote in its entirety:

We have all had teachers who made a difference. I had a great chemistry teacher in high school who made his subject immensely interesting. Chemistry seemed enthralling compared to biology. In biology, we were dissecting frogs - just hacking them to pieces, actually - and our teacher didn't explain why. My chemistry teacher sensationalized his subject a bit and promised that it would help us understand the world. When I was in my twenties, I read James D. Watson's "Molecular Biology of the Gene" and decided my high school experience had misled me. The understanding of life is a great subject. Biological information is the most important information we can discover, because over the next several decades it will revolutionize medicine. Human DNA is like a computer program but far, far more advanced than any software ever created. It seems amazing to me now that one great teacher made chemistry endlessly fascinating while I found biology totally boring. (Gates, The Road Ahead, Penguin: London, Revised, 1996 p. 228)

Again this is Bill Gates' idea of DNA from his recollection of it from High School and his 20s. The story is more about the importance of good teachers. To quote John Pieret from Talk Origins, "Gates may well know a lot about software, but he is in no position to assess how much DNA is, if at all, like a computer program. In point of fact, anyone who read the above passage would doubt that Gates had even a high school level understanding of biology and anyone interested in honesty would make that clear if they still wanted to use the quote."

This discovery has made acute a longstanding scientific mystery that Darwin never addressed or solved: the mystery of how the very first life on earth arose.

Well, Darwin never tried to solve how life arose. It is stated in On the Origin of Species that evolution is the process that takes place after life has arisen. Anyone who has read the book would understand that. DNA also says nothing of how life arose, so I really don't know what Mr. Meyer is trying to say here. Abiogenesis is the study of how life on Earth can arise from inanimate matter.

To date no theory of undirected chemical evolution has explained the origin of the digital information in DNA needed to build the first living cell on earth.

Maybe because no one believes that DNA contains digital information. This is just nonsense and an attempt to make the Bill Gates' quote meaningful.

Abiogenesis has had some incredible breakthroughs in the last few months. John Sutherland and other researchers were able to synthesize RNA in conditions resembling early earth. RNA is a self replicating molecule and precursor to DNA. Wired has an excellent article on it entitled "Life’s First Spark Re-Created in the Laboratory".

Yet modern scientists who argue for intelligent design do not do so merely because natural processes have failed to explain the origin of the information in cells. Instead, they argue for design because systems possessing these features invariably arise from intelligent causes.

Obviously, Mr. Meyer has not kept up with Abiogenesis and RNA world or is just being willfully ignorant. He has also not demonstrated that "systems possessing these features invariably arise from intelligent causes." He is just asserting this with no evidence to back up the claim.

DNA functions like a software program. We know that software comes from programmers. Information - whether inscribed in hieroglyphics, written in a book, or encoded in a radio signal - always arises from an intelligent source. So the discovery of digital code in DNA provides a strong scientific reason for concluding that the information in DNA also had an intelligent source.

DNA does not function like a software program. The only person that has said this is Bill Gates and he is not a molecular biologist. I have a degree in Management Information Systems and have written software programs. If I wrote a program with lots of steps that did nothing, ie Junk DNA, it would be a waste of time and energy. This would not be intelligent on my part. To say that DNA has an intelligent source, is highly questionable with inclusion of Junk DNA. This is not even mentioning negative mutations in DNA which cause suffering, very intelligent.

Heiroglyphics, books and radio signals all have a source that we can look up. Even if that source has expired. They are also not self replicating. To compare them to self replicating biological functions is naive at best and lying at worst.

Design is an inference from biological data, not a deduction from religious authority. Jefferson said just that, and based his political thinking on it.

The courts disagree with you. As well does the Discovery Institute for which you work and wrote this article. Also Mr. Meyer's acknowledged the Wedge Document, which speaks of broad social, political, and academic agenda whose ultimate goal is to "defeat [scientific] materialism" represented by evolution, "reverse the stifling materialist world view and replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions" and to "affirm the reality of God" by the Discovery Institute. So which is it, Mr. Meyer?

The evidence for what he presciently called “Nature’s God’’ is stronger than ever.

Yet, you provide no evidence.

Our nation’s existence, with its guarantee to protect each person’s “inalienable rights,’’ may be counted among the fruits of Jefferson’s belief in intelligent design.

This is a total non-sequitur. The beliefs of Jefferson in founding the nation have nothing to do with ID being taught in schools. Even if Jefferson would support ID, it does not matter when it comes to the legality of it. ID was given its day in court and it lost. Kitzmiller v. Dover is the final word. Making fallacious appeals to authority are meaningless.

Edit: I just found the rest of the quote from Jefferson that Meyer is leaving out, in other words quote mining.

The movements of the heavenly bodies, so exactly held in their course by the balance of centrifugal and cent. metal forces; the structure of our earth itself, with its distribution of lands, waters, and atmosphere; animals and vegetable bodies, examined in all their minutes” particles; insects, mere atoms of life, yet as perfectly organized as man or mammoth; the mineral substances, their generation and uses; it is impossible, I say, for the human mind not to believe, that there is in all of this, design, cause, and effect, up to an ultimate cause, a Fabricator of all things from matter and motion, their Preserver and Regulator while permitted to exist in their present forms, and their regeneration into new and other forms.

Emphasis mine. It seems Jefferson accepted some form of evolution, albeit this is still no endorsement one way or the other.

A Child to Citizen C.I.A.

I promise to get a TAM7 post up, but I am still unpacking. In the mean time, here is the music post I missed from Thursday.

"A Child And His Lawnmower", The Dead Kennedys, Give Me Convenience Or Give Me Death
"Chocolate Salty Balls (P.S. I Love You)", Chef, South Park: Chef Aid
"Chop Shop", MXPX, Secret Weapon
"Christians Inferno", Green Day, 21st Century Breakdown
"Christie Road", Green Day, Kerplunk!
"Christmas In Heaven", Monty Python, Monty Python Sings
"Christmas In Hollis", Run-DMC, A Very Special Christmas, Vol. 1
"Chump", Green Day, Dookie
"Circumstance", MXPX, Let It Happen
"Citizen C.I.A.", Dropkick Murphys, The Warrior's Code

Physics - Bruce Malone Is Doing It Wrong

Creation Science Evangelism is the company started by convicted felon Kent Hovind. It is currently being run by Kent's son Eric Hovind. One of the current articles, on the web site, is "Physics Show That Six Day Creation is Possible" by Bruce Malone. In this article Bruce makes some pretty amazing claims on the Theory of Relativity. In particular, the idea of Time Dilation.

Before I continue, I want it to be known that I am copying this article under Fair Use and abiding by all the laws thereof. It is sad I have to state that but Creation Science Evangelism (CSE) has attempted to silence its critics in the past.

Exodus 20:11 makes one of the most unbelievable statements of the Bible: "In six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day." It is hard to imagine a clearer statement defining how long God took in creating the entire universe. However, this simple statement has presented a seemingly impossible dilemma for Christians. On one hand, modern cosmology teaches that the universe has taken billions of years to form. On the other hand, if this clear and straightforward statement of the Bible can not be trusted to mean what it says, how can we know that any statement of the Bible can be trusted to mean what it says?

Well that is not the only place in the Bible where it makes that claim. Most people reference Genesis Chapter 1 and the first few verses of Chapter 2. It also really isn't that seemingly impossible dilemma for Christians, just for those that believe in an errant Bible and special creation.

Also there is the assumption that the word ~wy or yowm means a 24 hour period. In reality it can mean day, time, or year. This is the word used in Genesis and Exodus when describing creation.

This is all just scratching the surface of what is wrong with the first creation story presented in Genesis. Things like light being created before the sun. The earth being created before the sun. Birds being created before land animals. Water being above the sky. Water not being created just God suddenly dividing it, where did it come from? None of that is covered in this article, so continuing on.

This was the dilemma which Dr. Russell Humphreys (physicist at Sandia National Laboratory) set out to solve as he studied what the Bible had to say about the formation of our universe. Most people have been taught that the universe is the result of a gigantic explosion called the "Big Bang".

Sorry, I am stopping him here. He has just created a straw man. No one who understands the Big Bang Theory claim the universe is the result of a gigantic explosion. What the real belief is that the universe experienced rapid expansion, like when you blow up a balloon. There was no explosion. As a matter of fact, with the right instruments we can still observe the expansion of the universe to this day as it is ongoing.

During this explosive expansion, all the matter of the universe supposedly expanded outward from a tiny pinpoint. All modern cosmological models start with the assumption that the universe has neither a center nor an edge. When these assumptions are plugged into Einstein’s general theory of relativity, the result is an expanding universe which is billions of years old at every location.

Again, it was not an explosion. Pinpoint is too big, it was far smaller than that. Yes, there is no center of the Universe. To go back to the balloon analogy, the universe would be more akin to the skin of the balloon. It is expanding but where does the expansion start for the skin of the balloon? For a more detailed explanation you can read the Usenet Physics FAQ by Don Koks with this particular article being written by Philip Gibbs in 1997. To claim that there is a center to the Universe is absurd and shows a complete lack of understanding in Cosmology and Physics. The edge of the Universe is similar. There is no physical edge, but gravity creates a type of edge. According to Einstein's Theory of Relativity, which is supposedly what this article is about, gravity curves space. It is possible that there is so much mass in the Universe that gravity curves the Universe around back onto itself. Again like the balloon analogy, find the edge of the balloon. You can't, it just goes around and around (ignoring where you blow the balloon up at). What the article is asking you to do is to find the edge of the Earth, and then claiming because you can't the Earth must be infinite in size. Again a basic misunderstanding of Cosmology and Relativity. As you can see from the University of Michigan's website Windows to the Universe this question is asked by a 9, 12 and 13 year old. One would think a physicist at Sandia National Laboratory would understand the universe a bit better.

Rather than start with these arbitrary assumptions (a universe having no center and no edge), Dr. Humphreys decided to take the most apparent meaning of the Biblical text and see what model of the universe developed. He reasoned that if the Bible was inspired by God, as it claims to be, it should not have to be twisted to be understood. It should have the same straight forward meaning for a "man on the street", a brilliant physicist, or a theologian.

Again, these are not arbitrary assumptions, these are observable facts. This is just another straw man.

So, Dr. Humphreys decides to throw out facts and starts to build an imaginary universe based on the Bible. The rest of it, I could not agree more with. If the Bible was inspired by a creator god, then it should be accurate in every detail of that creation. It is just those pesky facts keep getting in the way. Things like the Earth revolves around the Sun, the Moon is not a source of light, sunlight couldn't exist without the Sun, you know things like that.

The Bible clearly indicates three things about God's formation of the universe. First, the earth is the center of God's attention in the universe. By implication, the earth may also be located near the center-perhaps so man can see the glory of God's creation in every direction. Second, the universe (both matter and space itself) has been "stretched out". Third, the universe has a boundary, and therefore it must have a center.

Okay, now we have something that is testable. This so far looks like good science. If any of these things is not true then the Bible is wrong about the Universe and about creation. Which, according to Bruce at the beginning of this article, means that we cannot trust anything the Bible says. ("...if this clear and straightforward statement of the Bible can not be trusted to mean what it says, how can we know that any statement of the Bible can be trusted to mean what it says?")

Well, as I pointed out earlier there is no center of the Universe. In fact quoting the article by Philip Gibbs that I posted earlier.

In 1929 Edwin Hubble announced that he had measured the speed of galaxies at different distances from us, and had discovered that the farther they were, the faster they were receding. This might suggest that we are at the centre of the expanding universe, but in fact if the universe is expanding uniformly according to Hubble's law, then it will appear to do so from any vantage point.

If we see a galaxy B receding from us at 10,000 km/s, an alien in galaxy B will see our galaxy A receding from it at 10,000 km/s in the opposite direction. Another galaxy C twice as far away in the same direction as B will be seen by us as receding at 20,000 km/s. The alien will see it receding at 10,000 km/s:

A B C
From A 0 km/s 10,000 km/s 20,000 km/s
From B -10,000 km/s 0 km/s 10,000 km/s


So from the point of view of the alien at B, everything is expanding away from it, whichever direction it looks in, just the same as it does for us.

The universe is expanding at a uniform rate and observation from any point will seem like that point is the center, because there is no center. Find the center of the skin on a balloon or find the center of the surface of the earth. These things are nonsensical. Point 1 is wrong and the Bible cannot be trusted because of this according to Bruce Malone.

Point 2 is partially correct. The Universe is expanding, but matter is not. That would mean that everyone and everything was expanding, this is just a weird silly statement and I don't know where it comes from. The Usenet Physics FAQ covers this idea of Expanding Atoms originally written by Michael Weiss (yes it is out of date, but the article admits that and the basic concepts are right). Analysis, part of Point 2 is incorrect and thus the Bible is untrustworthy.

Point 3 is wrong. Find the boundary of the surface of the Earth or the skin of a balloon. Obviously both are finite, yet neither have a boundary. The same goes for the Universe. Something can be finite and yet have no boundary. Why is this so hard to grasp for someone who is a physicist at Sandia National Laboratory. Point 3 is wrong and so the Bible is untrustworthy.

Well there you have it, Dr. Russell Humphreys gave us three testable ideas for the trustworthiness of the Bible and failed in 2.5 of them. So the Bible is untrustworthy. Thank you Creation Science Evangelism for pointing this out. Oh, they have more.

If these three assumptions are plugged into the currently accepted formulas of physics, and the mathematical crank is turned, we live in a universe in which clocks tick at different rates depending on your location.

What? This sentence is in English, yet I can't parse it. Okay, so they take the three assumptions, that are proven wrong, and add them to physics, which is descriptions of the real world and how it works. Then they do some sort of undefined math and voila clocks run at different times. Huh? How does this come close to making any kind of sense?

Physics is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the world and universe behave. If you take made up stuff and throw it into formulas based on real observations, you end up with made up stuff. This is like trying to take comic book heroes and use physics to explain how they do their things. In the end you still have make believe. It can be used to gain an interest in physics, as with the popular Science of the Watchmen, but what you derive from it is completely useless.

After this abysmal attempt at science, now Bruce is going to try and explain what Time Dilation is and how it matters to his argument.

Furthermore, the time dilation effect would be magnified tremendously as the universe was originally expanding. As the universe expanded, there was a point at which time was moving very rapidly at the outer edge and essentially stopped near the center. At this point in the expansion of the universe, only days were passing near the center, while billions of years were passing in the heavens. This is the inevitable conclusion based on our current knowledge of physics and starting with Biblical assumptions instead of arbitrary ones.

First that is not how Time Dilation or the Universe works. Time dilation is the phenomenon whereby an observer finds that another's clock, which is physically identical to their own, is ticking at a slower rate as measured by their own clock. This is often interpreted as time "slowing down" for the other clock, but that is only true in the context of the observer's frame of reference. Locally (i.e., from the perspective of any observer within the same frame of reference, without reference to another frame of reference), time always passes at the same rate. Time dilation is affected by speed and gravity. Since the Universe is expanding at the same constant rate at all points, there would be no time dilation due to speed.

Second, let me say this loudly as he seems not to understand, THERE IS NO CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE!

Third, making up arbitrary assumptions is what Dr. Humphreys did, not what cosmologists do. Instead cosmologists look at the facts and determine what is happening according to the facts, not the other way around. Dr. Humphreys instead made assumptions and then shoehorned physics into agreeing with him.

Albert Einstein rejected the idea that the Bible could be literally true. He wrote that, "Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached the convictions that many of the stories in the Bible could not be true." How ironic that the most ridiculed Biblical story (about a recent, literal, six day creation of the universe) is exactly the story which Albert Einstein’s work has shown to be entirely possible. A comprehensive explanation of Dr. Humphreys work, can be found in his book.

Well I am thankful they didn't quote mine Einstein into looking like a believer, like some other creationists. *coughRayComfortcough* It is not ironic because Bruce and Dr. Humphreys have failed miserably to show that it is "entirely possible". All they did was take make believe plug into to formulas based on the real world. Then claimed that those answers, which are still make believe, prove the original make believe is possible. Which it would be if we lived in the make believe world they started with. Never let facts get in the way of your make believe world.

Addendum: I knew I was missing something on Time Dilation and my friend Stan, from the blog Cabbagery, pointed it out. Dr. Humphreys has Time Dilation backwards. If Earth was the slower moving object and the "outer edge" (which is still meaningless) was moving faster. Then time would appear to slow down for the outer edge if your point of reference was the Earth.

Morality and Ray Comfort

I am starting off with an easy debunking, Ray Comfort.

In his latest post called What's Wrong With a Bit of Cussing? Ray says:

If you are an atheist, you can’t say anything is morally "wrong." Is rape wrong? If you answer "Yes," I ask you "Who says?" If you say "Society," then if society deemed rape morally okay, does it become right? What about murder? Is that right or wrong? What say society says it’s right, just for getting rid of Jews and blacks? Is it then right? Is it morally okay to kill children in the womb? You say again, "If society says so." How about men marrying men? If society says so. Is pedophilia wrong? Same scenario.

First off, Ray's weird use of quotes around wrong. I understand what he is doing. He is trying to say that atheists cannot know what wrong means. So immediately he is dismissing any argument against his own.

Second, shouldn't we define what we are talking about? Without definitions then we could definitely be talking about different things using the same word. Since this is about morality. The word we should define is morality. I am going to use the Wikipedia definitions of Morality (shortened versions).

Morality (from the Latin moralitas "manner, character, proper behavior") has three principal meanings.

In its first, descriptive usage, morality means a code of conduct or belief which is held to be authoritative in matters of right and wrong. Morals are arbitrarily created and subjectively defined by society, philosophy, religion, and/or individual conscience. An example of the descriptive usage could be "common conceptions of morality have changed significantly over time."

In its second, normative and universal sense, morality refers to an ideal code of belief and conduct, one which would be espoused in preference to other alternatives by the sane "moral" person, under specified conditions. In this "prescriptive" sense , moral value judgments such as "murder is immoral" are made.

In its third usage, 'morality' is synonymous with ethics. Ethics is the systematic philosophical study of the moral domain.

As we look again at the first sentence, "If you are an atheist, you can’t say anything is morally 'wrong.'" Ray is making the assertion that atheists cannot know what morals or what wrong means. Evidence points to the fact that atheists are less likely to break laws of society. In 1997, Rod Swift requested the religious status of Prisoners to compare percentage of incarceration rates among beliefs. Rod posted the results at his website, Holy Smoke. Now one person investigating or one study a pattern does not make. So at the Skeptic Files, they have organized all the studies on this subject. They all point to the same conclusion (one can verify this by looking up each study). Less than 1/10th of 1% of incoming prisoners are atheists. While atheists compose of 10-16% of the population as a whole (depending on which study you look at). If atheists have no morals then why are there not more atheists in prison? Why are atheist under represented in prisons?

Next Ray backs up his initial assertion with his form of "evidence". "Is rape wrong? If you answer 'Yes,' I ask you 'Who says?' If you say 'Society,' then if society deemed rape morally okay, does it become right? What about murder? Is that right or wrong? What say society says it’s right, just for getting rid of Jews and blacks? Is it then right? Is it morally okay to kill children in the womb? You say again, 'If society says so.' How about men marrying men? If society says so. Is pedophilia wrong? Same scenario." Here is Ray's strawman laid out. Atheists only get their morals from society. If we go back and look at the definition of morals, it paints a more full picture. "Morals are arbitrarily created and subjectively defined by society, philosophy, religion, and/or individual conscience." (emphasis mine) As you can see there is far more to morals than just societal pressures. Philosophy, religion, and individual conscience make up an individuals personal morality system. Most would say it is also based on empathy or how one feels toward people within their community.

One rule that has permeated all societies is the Golden Rule, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." This idea has appeared in all regions where man has appeared. It was around well before it was written in the New Testament, of which the Kings James translation is the what I quoted. Another name for it is the ethic of reciprocity. It is generally considered to be the basics for human rights. This is part of where we get that it is generally not okay to rape or murder (someone can always come up with a situation where it would be better to rape or murder than another single alternative, usually some form of genocide), as we would not want to have these actions done to us. The golden rule has updated to the platinum and double platinum rule, "treat others the way they want to be treated" and "treat others the way they don’t even know they want to be treated."

To actually answer Ray's questions, as facetious as they are, I would say:

1. Yes, rape in 99.9999999% of cases is wrong.
2. I say, so does society, so does the moral zeitgeist, so does the Platinum Rule, and so does empathy. I am sorry you lack empathy and don't understand that.
3. I didn't say just society, and if things were different they would be different. What you suggest overturns millions of years of evolution, thus it is nigh impossible to happen.
4. To me, I would still say no, but this is based on the society I grew up in, so my judgment could be different IF (that is a huge fucking if) we evolved differently, but we didn't so the point is mute.
5. I say it is wrong, most people on the planet agree with me, even ones who don't prescribe to your bible, Ray.
6. Well since the Christians did say that in recent history, I would disagree with them and their absolute morals.
7. To me, no. But obviously the Catholic Church, Martin Luther, the KKK (a christian organization) and the Nazis (Gott Mit Uns) all thought it was okay, and backed up their beliefs with bible verses.
8. I want to know how a child got in the womb in the first place. Child - a human being between the stages of birth and puberty. Fetus - a developing mammal or other viviparous vertebrate, after the embryonic stage and before birth. Embryo - a multicellular diploid eukaryote in its earliest stage of development, from the time of first cell division, in humans, it is called an embryo until about eight weeks after fertilization. Now if you mean Embryos then no, I have no problem with it. Most abortions are done within the first 12 weeks or pregnancy. Very few and only in extreme cases are done after that.
9. I think people should be allowed to marry whomever they want. I am intrigued that you only reduced it to men marrying men, I think there may be some homosexual underpinnings in your life Ray.
10. Pedophilia is wrong. The main reason for that is the harm it causes the child, who cannot ever give consent. If you can't understand that and require some old book to tell you this then you have serious issues.

I too notice that again Ray dodged the question asked. This is a standard tactic used by Ray Comfort. I will finish this with a quote from Eric Cartman.

What's the big fucking deal, bitch? It's not like it hurts anyone. Fuck, fuck, fuckity, fuck, fuck, fuck.

Changes, They is a Comin'

I still feel the energy of TAM7 running through me body. I think I want to take my blog down more of the skeptic debunking angle. There is a lot of bunk out there and not enough voices saying "Bullshit". So I have decided to step up and do my part. I am going to make skeptical analysis of woo more prominent here.