X False X

There has been hype around the science blogosphere about the recently distributed behemoth Atlas of Creation by Islamic creationist Harun Yahya. Even newspapers, like the New York Times, have began commenting on the book (despitean online version being available for quite sometime now). So far, my favorite assessment of the book comes from Kevin Padian of UC Berkley, as stated in the linked NYT article: "[Recipients of Atlas were] just astounded at its size and production values and equally astonished at what a load of crap it is."

Jeremiah McNichols points out his favorite part of the entire book: it's visuals. Namely, some of the figures have big red x's across the image with the word FALSE written in big bold letters. McNichols has some examples on his page.

This visual tactic is absolutely great! I must adopt it for everything I find annoying. Go buy the X FALSE X gear and help spread the aspect of visual skepticism; all proceeds go the the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Women Came from the Penile "Rib" Bone

In the beginning, the God of the Bible created mammals (and a bunch of other stuff), and the males of these mammals had a baculum (penis bone) to aid in copulation. Quite literally, the bone enables the male and female to remain in coitus for an extended period of time maximizing fertilization potential. Perhaps the greatest invention by God, but he did not bestow it upon Man.

Or did he at one time but then took it back? Funny thing is, there is no word for penis in Biblical Hebrew. Is it possible that God took the male baculum to make Eve out of and that the perineal raphe is a sort of divine reminder of where women came from (recall: 'the Lord...closed up the flesh instead thereof)? After all, it is a well-known fact that men and women have the same number of ribs. So, perhaps God used a bone that, to the sheep-herders who wrote the Bible, looked very much like a rib, thus the false association. Or it could also be linked to the weak association of the Hebrew word translated as 'rib' in Genesis 2 (tsela) but appears elsewhere meaning a general support structure.

However, I rather like the former description, if only for its humor factor. God once blessed Man with a very hard penis, but now we must use a hydraulic system that depends on our health (blood pressure, mostly, which is affected by stress and disease). Seriously, what is up with God's thorough infatuation with the male anatomy and sex in general? Is it perhaps a form of Freudian penis envy (thus, God is a woman) or God is envious of the size/prowess of the human male genitalia (thus god is male)?

So, remember ladies. You were made from my penis bone. It is thus your duty to honor my gigantic penis.

(Note: Thanks to Jeb for finding my error in the title of my post)

A War with Iran would defeat historical precedent.

Washington's latest attempt to rally the American war-machine seems to fall on deaf ears. At least, on my deaf ears.

People who are gun-ho for a war with Iran seem to lack any education concerning war politics and the history of war itself. Whenever a regime falls, would it not be in the best interest of a nearest neighbor with the capacity to influence the new regime proceed to attempt to influence the regime? That is, when Hussein's regime fell, the new order in Iraq became open to outside influence and persuasion. Essentially, America lit the vacancy sign over Iraq, allowing area Turks, Jihadists, Iranians, Kurds, etc. to enter en masse to stake out their own sphere of influence (not to mention internal desires of the Iraqis). Welcome to political economics 101 where the game is to maximize marginal utility.

Administration officials and some legislatures seem intent on positing that Iran is killing American soldiers in Iraq by arming and training insurgents. I am a Patriot, but the rational side of me can see through the appeal to my patriotism. As Stephen Kinzer points out, there are several instance in history where a country indirectly aided an enemy of ours, and in each instance we did not go to war with the aiding country. China gave munitions and training to the North Koreans. The USSR gave munitions to the North Vietnamese. In several instances when America supplied munitions to one side in a conflict, the opossing side did not declare war on us.

The US treads on dangerous waters. A war with Iran would be detrimental to not only our reputation and our military, but to the entire world's health. I hate to be a fear-monger, but don't blink: this administration may lead us right into WW3.

Poor Design: God and DNA (YouTube video)

I came across the following YouTube video. I will warn you; there are pictures of birth defects not for the faint of heart.

Prominent ID member quote mines for the win...

Over at Uncommon Descent, Salvador Cordova (scordova) has managed to construct a quote mine from a recent PNAS paper..

Cordova quotes Masatoshi Nei: "Natural selection...is not the fundamental cause of evolution." As experience has shown, anytime an ellipse appears is a red flag that quote mining has ensued. The full quote, as written by Nei, reads: "Natural selection occurs as a consequence of mutational production of different genotypes, and therefore it is not the fundamental cause of evolution."

The Nei paper, as addressed by it's abstract, is presenting the notion that instead of phentoypic evolution being driven by natural selection with genetic mutation being an undercurrent, the roles of each are actually reversed. A novel notion, in my opinion, and the paper far exceeds my level of expertise in the topic. However, I don't see how this flies in the face of modern synthesis (aka "Neo-Darwinism"). The units of change are still genes, and a contributing factor to evolution is still natural selection via population dynamics. Nei seems to argue that the contribution of evolution via natural selection is less than that of mutation.

Cordova is doing nothing more than attempting to claim a cheap victory by a misquote. He thinks the paper contains some level of profundity to warrant mentioning. It reads like a new perspective on thinking of the contribution of mutation to natural selection.

Cordova's side-tangent into the fictitious Haldane's dilemma is evidence enough for me to not take him serious, though.

It seems fitting...

Your Score: Haughty Intellectual

You are 100% Rational, 28% Extroverted, 14% Brutal, and 57% Arrogant.

You are the Haughty Intellectual. You are a very rational person, emphasizing logic over emotion, and you are also rather arrogant and self-aggrandizing. You probably think of yourself as an intellectual, and you would like everyone to know it. Not only that, but you also tend to look down on others, thinking yourself better than them. You could possibly have an unhealthy obsession with yourself as well, thus causing everyone to hate you for being such an elitist twat. On top of all that, you are also introverted and gentle. This means that you are just a quiet thinker who wants fame and recognition, in all likelihood. Like so many countless pseudo-intellectuals swarming around vacuous internet forums to discuss worthless political issues, your kind is a scourge upon humanity, blathering and blathering on and on about all kinds of boring crap. If your personality could be sculpted, the resulting piece would be Rodin's "The Thinker"--although I am absolutely positive that you are not nearly as muscular or naked as that statue. Rather lacking in emotion, introspective, gentle, and arrogant, you are most certainly a Haughty Intellectual! And, most likely, you will never achieve the recognition or fame you so desire! But no worries!

To put it less negatively:

1. You are more RATIONAL than intuitive.

2. You are more INTROVERTED than extroverted.

3. You are more GENTLE than brutal.

4. You are more ARROGANT than humble.

Compatibility:

Your exact opposite is the Schoolyard Bully. (Bullies like to beat up nerds, after all.)

Other personalities you would probably get along with are the Braggart, the Hand-Raiser, and the Robot.

*

*

If you scored near fifty percent for a certain trait (42%-58%), you could very well go either way. For example, someone with 42% Extroversion is slightly leaning towards being an introvert, but is close enough to being an extrovert to be classified that way as well. Below is a list of the other personality types so that you can determine which other possible categories you may fill if you scored near fifty percent for certain traits.

The other personality types:

The Emo Kid: Intuitive, Introverted, Gentle, Humble.

The Starving Artist: Intuitive, Introverted, Gentle, Arrogant.

The Bitch-Slap: Intuitive, Introverted, Brutal, Humble.

The Brute: Intuitive, Introverted, Brutal, Arrogant.

The Hippie: Intuitive, Extroverted, Gentle, Humble.

The Televangelist: Intuitive, Extroverted, Gentle, Arrogant.

The Schoolyard Bully: Intuitive, Extroverted, Brutal, Humble.

The Class Clown: Intuitive, Extroverted, Brutal, Arrogant.

The Robot: Rational, Introverted, Gentle, Humble.

The Haughty Intellectual: Rational, Introverted, Gentle, Arrogant.

The Spiteful Loner: Rational, Introverted, Brutal, Humble.

The Sociopath: Rational, Introverted, Brutal, Arrogant.

The Hand-Raiser: Rational, Extroverted, Gentle, Humble.

The Braggart: Rational, Extroverted, Gentle, Arrogant.

The Capitalist Pig: Rational, Extroverted, Brutal, Humble.

The Smartass: Rational, Extroverted, Brutal, Arrogant.

Be sure to take my Sublime Philosophical Crap Test if you are interested in taking a slightly more intellectual test that has just as many insane ramblings as this one does!

About Saint_Gasoline

I am a self-proclaimed pseudo-intellectual who loves dashes. I enjoy science, philosophy, and fart jokes and water balloons, not necessarily in that order. I spend 95% of my time online, and the other 5% of my time in the bathroom, longing to get back on the computer. If, God forbid, you somehow find me amusing instead of crass and annoying, be sure to check out my blog and my webcomic at SaintGasoline.com.

Link: The Personality Defect Test written by saint_gasoline on OkCupid, home of the The Dating Persona Test

Intelligent Design: Affirming the Consequent

As one who is attempting to educate themselves on anti-evolution demagogy, I often hear recited by proponents of intelligent design theory a variant of the teleological argument. The classic teleological argument read as follows:

1. Every design has a designer
2. The universe is designed
3. Therefore, the universe has a designer

However, when we do a proper logical computation of the above argument, one finds that the argument is not sound under all variants.

Let us use the ID variant. Intelligent design proposes that, based on characteristics of a known designer, we can infer a designer from objects that possess certain attributes of design. That is, we know intuitively what occurs when a designer is present, and therefore it seemingly logically follows that we can infer a designer from the designed. That is: "If designer, then design".

So as to avoid confusion, that me rephrase the sentence as follows: "If designer, then complex specified information". Complex specified information is a term coined by IDists, so I will use that term (which is logically equivalent to the "design" mentioned earlier) so I can use intutive symbols to represent the atomic sentences or arguments as

D -> C

were D is designer and C is complex specified information. Now, the IDist claims that complex specified information exists, and that the existence of said complex specified information provides evidence of a designer. However, we see in the construction above that the designer is the antecedent of the conditional sentence and the complex specified information is the consequent. This does not bode well for the IDist.

In logic, it is a non-trivial fashion to show that affirming the consequent is a logical fallacy that renders an argument unsound. The argument is unsound simply on the basis of the definition of a conditional sentence. A conditional sentence is only considered false in a truth analysis when the consequent is false. The sentence is true so long as the consequent is true independent of the truth or falsity of the antecedent. Therefore, one cannot derive a truth-value from analyzing a conditional sentence "backwards" which is the case of the IDist.

St. Augustine Was Wiser Beyond His Years

The following is an excerpt from one of St. Augustine's works, "De Genesi ad litteram libri duodecim" (The Literal Meaning of Genesis). I find it highly applicable to loud-mouthed young earth creationists.

Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he hold to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods and on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion.

Click here to read the entire work.

Presidential Coincidences Evidence for an Intelligent Assassin

If we truly follow the arguments put forth by intelligent design advocates concerning the concept that all the cosmological constants are "just right" for our existence, then we are seemingly forced to concede much in terms of our human history being pushed by other intelligent agencies. Charles G. Lambdin puts it bluntly with the following example in his review on the intelligent design camp's latest movie:

The thesis of The Privileged Planet is no different than the classic case of Presidential coincidences: Abraham Lincoln was elected to congress in 1846. John F. Kennedy was elected to congress in 1946. Lincoln was elected President in 1860, Kennedy in 1960. Both of their last names have seven letters. Both of their wives experienced the loss of child in the White House. Both were shot in the head on a Friday. Both were assassinated by Southerners and succeeded by Southerners. Lincoln was succeeded by Andrew Johnson, who was born in 1808. Kennedy was succeeded by Lyndon Johnson, who was born in 1908. Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth, has 15 letters in his name. Kennedy’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, has 15 letters in his name. Both assassins were known by three names. Booth was born in 1839, Oswald in 1939. As I am unable to imagine otherwise, these coincidences are too great to have occurred due to chance alone, so there must be some Intelligent Assassin behind it. Thus runs the reasoning throughout The Privileged Planet.

To be honest, I never knew this concerning the two Presidents. You learn something new everyday.

The Social Structure of Plants

There is an old wives' tale about singing to plants to keep them healthy and glowing. I have always been skeptical of this concept, though, because plants lack a neural system. Our neural network allows us to transmit signals to be processed by our brain, whether they be sound waves that oscillate our chest cavity or the fine hairs of our ear canal. The only network located in a plant that I am familiar with are that of the xylem and phloem, but those only carry fluids and dissolved materials throughout the plant.

However, recent research has shown the intricate complexities that have evolved with our ridiculously distant relatives. Ethylene has been known to be released by plants to promote various cascade reactions depending on the plant. I remember reading once that some vegetables release similar chemical cascades when boiled (whether this is true or not is irrelevant to my main point, in the end). The author humorously posited that plants thus felt pain. This "pain" is obviously different then the "pain" the majority animals feel, but "life" is equally as differen for the plant then the animal.

Though the concept of plants having feelings or emotions are odd since they lack a nervous system, it is interesting to note that plants have the ability to recognize their siblings.

“The ability to recognize and favour kin is common in animals, but this is the first time it has been shown in plants” said Susan Dudley, associate professor of biology at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada. “When plants share their pots, they get competitive and start growing more roots, which allows them to grab water and mineral nutrients before their neighbours get them. It appears, though, that they only do this when sharing a pot with unrelated plants; when they share a pot with family they don’t increase their root growth. Because differences between groups of strangers and groups of siblings only occurred when they shared a pot, the root interactions may provide a cue for kin recognition.”

My question, like any good scientist, is how. How do plants recognize one another? Considering the lack of eyes, I am going to have to assume it is some chemical recognition. Perhaps the mechanism is in the roots? I am fairly certain leaves have been studied ad naseum concerning the gases they release. It is a shame I am unable to log onto my university library's resources at the moment. I would attempt to find the paper the article discusses and other papers relevant to discussing the social network of plants.

Though this doesn't change my perspective on my role in the predation of vegetables and fruits in my life, this find does suggest that plants are more sophisticated than naive reasoning allows.