Archive for February, 2009
Matthew Nisbet is an idiot
Posted by CyberLizard in Atheism on February 12, 2009
I don’t usually read the tripe over at the Framing Science blog. Matthew Nisbet spends too much of his time whining about how the “New Atheist movement” is offending the religious folk and how science should bend over and take it up the ass from the theistards who want to inject their fantasies into science, all in the name of “working together” and “finding common ground”. For some reason, he seems to think that pointing out the absurdities inherent in the beliefs and actions of the religious is disrespectful to religion. We shouldn’t go confronting those who make absurd claims with absolutely no proof, even when we are possessed of a plethora of evidence to the contrary; evidence obtained through science.
PP
Anyway, as I was perusing the posts on Science Blogs, the title of a post from Nisbet caught my eye: Words of Advice for Atheist Literalists (and Many Bloggers). Naturally, being a blogger and an atheist, this made me curious. What advice would Nisbet offer? Turns out he was sharing some wisdom from Rick Weiss; a quote from an op-ed piece Weiss did for the Washington Post.
While Darwin himself never took his findings as definitive evidence against the existence of God, many people of faith have read that conclusion into his work. As a result, the man who first grasped biology’s most unifying concept is today widely demonized as an enemy of the church, even as many scientists and others make a similar mistake and invoke Darwin in their rejection of everything theological……Darwin’s humility in the face of insufficient evidence — his willingness to say “I don’t know” — is as important a lesson as any to be found in biology texts today. This is not about “teaching the controversy” — Darwin had a slam-dunk in his explanation of the evolution of species, including humans, and every modern test of evolutionary theory has only strengthened his conclusions. But he also knew there is plenty of room for God at the top, upstream of the business of biology.
Soldiers in today’s culture wars, whether in black collars or white lab coats, could take a tip from Darwin on his birthday bicentennial. He loved the natural world, “most beautiful and most wonderful.” And he knew enough to not pick fights over what he did not know.
I felt compelled to leave a comment at Framing Science which, apparently is still stuck in moderation. So I’ll go ahead and repeat it here.
I’m not sure exactly to whom Mr. Weiss is offering advice to. I believe that you’ll find that most atheists, the vast majority, do not empirically state that there is no god. Our position is that the likelihood of a god existing (especially a god as depicted in most religious texts) is so vanishingly remote that for all practical purposes we feel quite confident that there probably is no god. Nothing in science can be proven to absolution but that is no reason to create a supernatural explanation to cover up the fact that we don’t yet know the answer.In addition to that, I think you’ll find that most atheists would be quite willing to change their position if sufficient evidence were to be brought forth for the existence of a god. I seriously doubt that you’ll here a similar claim from the other side.
Darwinian evolution is just one small piece in the vast collection of evidence disproving the existence of god. It is a tremendous piece of work, but taken against the whole, it factors very little in my decision to be an atheist. It seems to me that the ones making the most strident assertions that Darwin == atheism are the theists who feel threatened by the analysis of the natural world that Darwin did and his discovery of a natural explanation for a process that formerly had only been described by supernatural stories.
As far as picking fights over what he did not know, the only ones I see doing that are the theists.
And Nisbet too. Talk about picking fights; offering unsolicited “advice” is a very quick way to piss people off. What a horses ass. 
Knight Rider lives on: in LEGO
Posted by CyberLizard in LEGO on February 11, 2009
I used to watch Knight Rider faithfully as a kid. Never missed that or Dukes of Hazzard. I was blown away with nostalgia when I saw this creation by Firas Abu-Jaber. You’ve got to check out his whole photostream. There are some fantastic goodies there!
Hat tip to Zack over at BrickSpace
I’m not insane!
Posted by CyberLizard in Comics on February 11, 2009
Well, I might be, but this proves that I’m not the only one who thinks about these things (I can’t figure it out, either 
)
Tired of Blogger’s POS system
Posted by CyberLizard in Blogging on February 10, 2009
I’m getting fed up. I hate Blogger’s stupid interface to edit posts. It’s HTML editor sucks and if you create your HTML in a real editor and then paste it in, it goes all wonky with formatting and white space issues, i.e. putting in fracking line breaks where I don’t want them! RRRAAAAGGGGEE!
My domain is fully hosted, so I could install a copy of WordPress and run it entirely on my own site. But would that screw up any rankings or crap with Google? And if I did that, wouldn’t it completely fuck up links to posts and comments and shit?
What a frigging pain in my arse. I’m probably too lazy to mess with it anyway
[Edit] And it fracking uploads every goddamn page to my ftp server when I make a post (or edit a post). All the archive pages, all the tag pages (even the ones for tags that I didn’t tag in my post). This is becoming a royal PITA.
WorldNutDaily agrees with Tehran Times?
Posted by CyberLizard in Religion on February 10, 2009
Good ol’ Chuckie, stirrin’ up trouble
When people think of anti-evolutionists, the first thing that probably comes to mind are the fundamentalist christian sects who believe in the literal truth of Genesis 1:1. But there is another group out there railing against the evils of evolution and poor ol’ Chuckie Darwin. In the Tehran Times, author Harun Yahya talks about Darwin in an article titled "Darwinism is the root of terrorism, Islam is the antidote”.
Wow, that’s a bold statement. How does he justify this claim?
When I investigated it I saw that Darwinism lay at the root of all this suffering, trouble, violence and pain as there would be no materialism without Darwinism. Darwinism is essential for materialist philosophy and without materialism there can be no communism, fascism, imperialism, savage capitalism, nor immorality nor terror. These are all inter-related, but because people are ignorant of that, they fail to grasp the importance of the intellectual struggle against Darwinism.
Sooooo, Darwin is to blame for communism, fascism, imperialism, savage capitalism, immorality and terror. Pretty impresive CV. But how, exactly, is he to blame for such horrors?
Yet Darwinism is the foundation of godlessness, of all atheist ideologies, and thus of all these troubles. I have gone right to the root of the matter and struck at the root of atheism in my work.
Ah, I see. It really boils down to atheism, of which the theory of evolution is at the root. Riiiiiight.
It is this that lies at the heart of Darwinists’ own suffering and the savagery in the materialist universe. In other words, by Allah’s leave, I have severed the jugular, the main artery of atheism. As Darwinism has collapsed, materialists have of course less and less respect for their own beliefs. It is no longer possible for people to be materialists. That is why, if Muslims want to fight atheism, they must wage an intellectual struggle against the religion of atheism.
I wonder if Joseph Farah is aware that his beliefs line up so neatly with those of fundamentalist Muslims. I think his head would explode. Maybe he’ll now embrace atheism as a way to combat the infiltration of Islam into our pure American society. Prolly not. Anyway, it gets better. In order to wage this "intellectual" struggle against atheism, individuals can
… make use of the www.harunyahya.com web site for that. They can download all the books, documentaries and articles on the site free of charge and make use of them. They must raise their own knowledge, understanding, culture and reveal the invalidity of Darwinism one by one with scientific evidence. You will then see that all these problems you listed will disappear. The truth will come and falsehood fades away, insha’Allah.
Joseph Farah and Harun Yahya sharing the love
Boy, this is sounding more and more like the WorldNutDaily. Watch out, Farah, you’ve got a competitor! There is so much stupid here that I can’t stand the burning much longer. Next thing you know he’s going to start spouting out idiocies about conspiracy theories…
This economic crisis is proof of how powerless Masons and atheist Zionists are in the face of the might and power of Allah. Allah has shown them how the system they established fails to lead to success. They are at a complete dead end with no way out. And with His name of “Jabbar” (Compeller), Allah has made that system impossible to implement and is obliging them to implement Islamic moral values.
There it is! I knew he wouldn’t let me down. No ranting screed would be complete without the invocation of shadowy conspiracies trying to dominate the world. He would have gotten full marks except for the omission of the Illuminati. Only one piece is missing to elevate this clown to Farah-like greatness: the declaration that we are living in the “End Times”. Come on, Yahya, don’t let me down.
Since we are living in the End Times, these things are all developments which our Prophet (May Allah bless him and grant him peace) has revealed will take place before the coming of Hazrat Mahdi (PBUH). The Messenger of Allah (PBUH) watched these incidents, literally as if in a mirror, saw them, and described them as they are. He referred to Muslim blood being spilled, to such happenings taking place in this period, to terrible corruption and chaos, to the spilling of innocent blood, to the killing even of women and children, to the killing of pregnant women, and to terrible strife. But our Prophet says that after that, “all this will be reversed with the appearance of Hazrat Mahdi (PBUH), one of my children, and that there will come an age of well-being, abundance, peace, plenty, gentleness, and beauty.” All this will happen.In other words, all the current trouble and difficulties presage the proximity, insha’Allah, of a delightful, enlightened and prosperous age.
He kicks the ball down to the end zone and scores a home run! GOOOOOOOAAAAAAL!!!
(side note: who decided that Muhammed would be satisfied with “PBUH” instead of “Peace Be Upon Him”? What, a bunch of imams gathered around the houkah and said, “You know what? My fingers are getting cramped from typing this crap out all the time. This is the 21st centruy, the age of the internet. That means, bring on the acronyms!”. If I were the prophet, I’d be pissed. I’d be all like, no slacking off just because you didn’t learn how to type! I’ll smite you!)
Picture of Farah’s head exploding as he realizes that he and Yahya are one and the same
If all of this weren’t enough to make Farah’s head go all Trinity, this next bit would do the trick.
What Muslims must do at this time, the most urgent issue they must concentrate on from morning till night, is to unite. All Muslims must sincerely ask this from Allah. They must constantly pray to Allah to “Hasten the coming of Hazrat Mahdi (PBUH), hasten the coming of the Prophet Jesus (PBUH).”
[emphasis mine]
Now you’ve done it. You’ve gone and dragged the J-man into this. Nuh-uh, we fundies called dibs on that dude. Now they’re gonna get medeival on your ass. Oh, wait, they already did that; it was called the Crusades.
Carnival Madness
Posted by CyberLizard in Uncategorized on February 6, 2009
For your reading pleasure, I encourage you to visit the latest edition of Carnival of the Vanities. This is one of the very first blog carnivals and collects together a wide variety of blog posts. It purports itself to be “…a roundup of recent blogging excellence.” I’d have to question that since they included one of my posts, but I’ll let you judge
Swing on by and check it out.
So THAT’s what second base is
Posted by CyberLizard in Sex on February 6, 2009
Do you know that I never figured this out for myself?
Honorifics, titles and uniforms
Posted by CyberLizard in Politics on February 4, 2009
There is a big ol’ discussion going on over at the ScienceBlogs collective over the issue of whether Jill Biden should get to use the title “Dr.” Apparently, she has a Ph. D. in Education, but newspapers think only MDs should get to be called Dr. There’s some nonsense about avoiding confusion between Ph. D.s and “real” doctors, i.e. medical doctors.
| IMHO, there is only one Doctor and he is The Doctor. |  |
As far as being recognized and avoiding confusion, let’s all just wear color coded jumpsuits, like in Star Trek. A “Doctor” would have two little pips on their collar, but you’d know if they were an MD because they’d be in a blue jumpsuit. I know that my life would be much easier if I didn’t have to think about what to wear.Of course, I would have nothing on my collar (no degree, remember?), but I would be in a bad-ass metallic silver jumpsuit ’cause I program computers and computers ROCK!!!!
Actually, I’d probably get lumped in with the Engineers and have to wear that ugly mustard yellow color.
*sigh*
Storm Talk
Posted by CyberLizard in Blogging on February 4, 2009
There is an amazing wealth of subjects out there to be geeky about. For a small subset of geeks, asking about the weather isn’t just making small talk; it’s an invitation to launch into a detailed analysis of the “thermodynamic properties of tornadic and nontornadic RFDs.” Um, okay… I’m sure that makes sense to someone out there.
This dude I know named Matt Grzych (don’t even bother trying, it’s pronounced “grish“) has just started a cool little blog called “Storm Talk“. He’s got some sort of sick fascination with spinning clouds, a.k.a. tornadoes. I’m a Florida boy; I love hurricanes, but tornadoes scare the shit out of me. Some sort of left over paranoia from childhood. Anyway, this guy will actually go chasing after tornadoes and the insane storms that produce them. Per his profile, “Rear flank downdrafts continue to interest me… so there may be lots of RFD talk in my blog. ” All right! I’m interested in rear flanks… What’s that? …I’m being told that he’s not referring to boodies. Shoot! And I was all excited to read the papers he’s published on them!
Anyway, head on over and check out the sciency coolness of some bad-ass storms at Storm Talk.
Ban the guns: Bring back swords
Posted by CyberLizard in Uncategorized on February 2, 2009
A recent event in my neighborhood started me thinking about guns, violence and conflict resolution. I came to the following conclusion: let’s get rid of the guns and replace them with swords. Hear me out, it’s not as crazy as it sounds.
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Swords are cool – Seriously, from the Three Musketeers to Highlander to Samurai Jack, all the most bad-ass heroes have swords (except for Bruce Lee; that man was a weapon unto himself). Think of a samurai, making a lightning-fast strike with his katana; or a knight, resplendent in armour and bearing the sword of his forefathers; or of the luxurious beauty and grace of the renaissance noble with his swift rapier. Actually, I can summarize it in just one word: lightsaber. Swords are just fracking cool. I mean, how many times did you choose a Halloween costume because it came with a sword? Every little kid, given a stick, will turn it into a sword at some point. It’s in our DNA or something. 
Mad skillz – The Man in Black didn’t overcome the incomparable Inigo Montoya by whipping out his 9mm and waving it around. It takes skill to wield a sword. And when you can do it properly, people respect you. Flash a gun and it’s the gun getting all the respect, by virtue of the power contained in it. You get none of that respect, though those pulling one often are confused by that little point. When you can use a sword, it is your skill, your strength, your discipline that get the respect. The sword is merely the conduit for these things.
Mano a mano (or womano a womano, or any other combination thereof) – If I pull out a gun, I have the automatic advantage. Even if you have one too, I can pop a cap in you before your hand even reaches that gun falling out of the waistband of your sweatpants. In the real world, people aren’t meeting in the middle of a dusty street at high noon, as romantic as that idea sounds. Guns are pulled during moments of high emotion, usually unplanned. Now, if both participants are armed with swords, they are forced to truly engage one another. One person’s skill and steel against another’s. Because of this, if you pull out a sword, you had better be damn sure you know how to use it. The mere presence of a sword doesn’t alter the balance of power in your favor, it’s what you do with it. And you never know how good the person you’re facing is.
Philosophy – Guns are power; power that the wielder has neither earned nor deserves. You didn’t have to train to master or harness that power. All that’s required is the ability to pull a trigger. Granted that there are true skills involved in marksmanship and I’m sure there are individuals out there who honor their firearm as a samurai does his katana. But these are few and far between. If you pick up a gun you get immediate use of its power with no effort on your part. Power obtained without training and knowledge can be dangerous. A sword makes you only mildly more powerful than being barehanded. It is the exercise of training with a weapon, of learning about it, of making it become a fluid extension of yourself that makes it powerful. The self-discipline and sacrifice needed to master the sword imparts knowledge, a realization of what that weapon can do that makes you respect it and understand when to use it.
Reduction in collateral damage – If I heard someone in my neighborhood shout, “He’s got a sword!” I wouldn’t duck back into my house and herd my family into a more protected room, as I had to when someone pulled a gun. A sword isn’t going to come flying through the window at supersonic speeds, smash clear through a cheap plasterboard wall and splatter my kids’ insides all over. A sword requires intention and proximity to cause damage. Generally, only the participants are in danger and they are presumably equipped to deal with it.
I realize that there is a lot of naivete and romanticization in this post. Too much time playing D&D, watching fantasy movies, reading LOTR over and over again skews a person’s perceptions, I guess. Personally I eschew violence. But there is a part of me that dislikes unfairness even more. And the power imbalance when a gun is introduced is inherently unfair. That pisses me off. It makes me think that if you’re so stupid that you are compelled to draw a weapon against someone, let it be a weapon where you stand an equal chance of getting taken out. Have some pride in yourself and don’t go the lazy, easy way out of whipping out your piece.
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