Dialogues with Hopeless Delusional Idiots ep. 3

This is a little switch from the prior entries in the series, but still fitting in the theme.  My previous two episodes involved religion and religious beliefs as the core topics of discussion.  This one is more on the alt-med end of the spectrum, mainly regarding anti-vaccine and autism-related nuttery.  Nonetheless, I'm still dealing with a hopeless delusional idiot here.  Let that be a reminder that idiocy of this scale is not limited to religion alone, and that this blog is about all kinds of stupidity.  It's things like this that make it bear mentioning that the moniker of "grumpy anti-theist" isn't enough by itself.  I'm "anti-" all kinds of insufferable stupidity.

There are several sub-movements within the set of alternative "medicine" believers, with a relatively minor amount of crossover between them.  It's not necessarily the case that someone who is anti-vaccine is also a believer in Ayurveda, or that someone who buys into homeopathy is also a reiki healing fanatic.  That's not to say, though, that such people don't exist.  In this case, I'm dealing with one such person.  It is pretty clear as things carry on that this person wasn't drawn to alternative "medicine" (read : quackery) because he really found them believable on their own terms, but because he was so staunchly opposed to real medicine that anything that was different was inherently better.

This conversation was taking place on an online forum for a site that is ostensibly about video games (one for which I was formerly a contributing editor for their press outlet back when I was still working in the games industry), but like many forums, they have sections dedicated to "off-topic" or "general" discussion, and topics like politics, current events, "new cool stuff" was always going around.  While I'm no longer super-active with this forum or the site that owns it, I still appear now and then.  This one started with a guy who was posting a lot of anti-medicine nonsense shortly after Steve Jobs died...  I ignored it for a while, and the thread carried on, but after a few posts in, it also started including some anti-vaccine and all the vaccines-cause-autism bullcrap that rested on the outlandish idea that a former Playboy bunny knows more about human biochemistry than all medical doctors in the world combined.

If This is How You Question Darwin...

After the Bill Nye-Ken Ham debate that showed just how clearly Ham has no hope of ever being considered scientifically-minded to any degree, there's been a lot of stressing the point.  All over the web, there's a lot of harping about the most important moments of the debate, and most of all, the Q&A where Bill gives examples of evidence that would change his position, while Ken Ham says flatly that nothing would ever change his mind.  The biggest thing about this is that it completely shatters Ham's contention that science is closed-minded and locked on to philosophical naturalism, while simultaneously showing that it is he who is indisputably closed-minded.  It's amazing how clear-cut he makes it for us.

Well, not long afterwards, HBO aired a documentary that featured Ham as well as plenty more incredibly closed-minded people who think...  uuhhh...  well, maybe "think" is the wrong word...  approach reality with the same fractured intellectual modality as Ken Ham and his ilk.  Doing the rounds through the atheist blogosphere are clips from the film, specifically of die-hard creationists and fideists who make even Chuck Missler (Mr. "Comets-aren't-made-of-ice-because-ice-cubes-don't-form-a-tail!") look almost sane.

See the video on Gawker for yourself, and read my thoughts below the jump --
http://gawker.com/watch-creationists-talking-about-creationism-1520841986

Dialogues with Hopeless Delusional Idiots ep. 2

So there are times when people are just out and out stupid and put out things in all caps and hurl insults rather than actually trying to argue anything.  We've all seen this, and it's the sort of thing where I could post something completely beyond the pale absurd saying that an actual creationist really said this, and you'd have no idea whether I was making it up or not.  Then there are those who seem otherwise well-adjusted and perhaps even normal on the surface.  It's only when you prod a little deeper that you find that these people are really hopelessly brainwashed.  This particular exchange is one of those latter cases.

This is from a discussion on Facebook about 3 years ago.  Obviously, I'm going to be leaving out real names, but it's not as if it really matters who specifically the person is so much as just being able to identify who said what.  The full discussion is actually quite long and involved multiple exchanges, so it will be difficult to really display it all in one blog post.  In between, of course, we had little moments where we had to stop because one of us would be out of town or something or because of text length limitations, we'd split the responses up, and so we would say things like "I'll have to continue this response in the next post" and so on, which isn't really relevant to the discussion, so I'm also leaving all those bits out.

Where it all actually began was a wall post from a mutual friend in which he linked to the news report about Craig Venter and his team successfully creating their artificial phenotype of bacteria containing an entirely synthetic genome.  It was billed in press as creating "artificial life", which is pseudo-accurate at best, and that's where a lot of debate soon came up, especially from the "Intelligent Design" crowd.  In any case, I put up a response saying that it was a great achievement on their part, and also addressing the fact that the ID supporters will say that it proves that you needed a designer just the way the Venter Institute's staff had to design this genome.  The key thing that gives away their fingerprint of design of course, is the fact that they encoded the URL to their white paper in the pseudo-genes of this bacterium.  If there was anything close to that for a hypothetical "designer" for all life, then you've got some sort of a case for ID...  and that's where the discussion began.

To begin with, I'll start with the part of the discussion that happened in the thread of the original post.  There are extremely long exchanges that happened afterwards when we took the discussion to PMs that I'll probably have to save for some follow-up posts.

Why is Science Hard to Learn?

One of the movies I'm working on happens to contain a wide variety of the sorts of caricatures of evolution that one would expect from the likes of Kirk Cameron.  From the trailer alone, you can see things like 4-winged flying turtles with sauropod-esque necks, giant ursine carnivores with owl-like heads, gourd-shaped marsupial primates, and a brightly-colored sabre-toothed feliforme that also has tusks.  Compared to this, the infamous crocoduck seems to barely scratch the surface.  But of course, the key difference is that nobody is purporting that The Croods is a documentary anymore than anyone telling a joke sincerely believes that a horse will enter a pub and order a drink.  The main reason such absurdities are even put forth is for sheer entertainment value, and I would hope that much is at least obvious.

Nonetheless, while I think many people would recognize that this is merely entertainment, it's interesting nonetheless that these types of wacky chimeras fall in line with the sort of picture that a lot of people have about evolution.  You have people like Deepak Chopra who can distort quantum mechanics to pretend it has something to do with the soul, and nobody can realize he's full of crap.  You have products out there which claim to emit frequencies in line with the nonexistent ones your body produces, and people swallow this crap.  Why is that?

Oh, if only I could count the ways...

Bare Necessities of Math

My wife of nearly 3 years, at one point in a certain job interview here in the US, was required to produce her college transcripts for review.  This itself was expected, since she'd received her degree in India.  In the course of a cursory review, one of the comments she received was that there were no fundamental algebra courses on her transcript.

Her response?  "Well, of course not!  It's a college transcript."

The very idea of basic algebra being a college level course was both shocking and horrifyingly appalling to her.  As well it should be.  I'm a product of the public schools in this country, and I recall that I had to be pushed two years ahead of the standard schedule to get to the point where I was taking algebra through middle school and high school.  And even then, the limiting factor was the schools, which simply didn't offer anything beyond basic differential and integral calculus in high school (and they limit you to 2 years ahead so that you at least have a math course every year of school).  You had to go at least to a community college to get anything beyond that.  Although I wasn't there, I can only imagine my wife's mouth must have been wide agape for several seconds in shock at the idea that the U.S. considers algebra a college-level subject.

And then today I read a little op-ed piece on the NY Times, that espouses doubt on the value of making algebra a necessary math course.

Why You Should Be an Elitist Prick

There is an old Tamil film released back when I was only about a year old, titled Varumaiyin Niram Sivappu.  Literally, that translates to "Red is the Color of Poverty."  At the very end of the movie (after the story formally really resolves, so to speak), the main character -- played by fellow Desi atheist, Kamal Hassan -- is working in a barber shop and he receives a customer.  Well, that scene is also the film's cameo for legendary Tamil comedy actor, "Thengai" (yes, as in coconut) Srinivasan, so viewers know ahead of time that the film would be closed off with a comedy scene.  During the shave, there is idle chatter between the barber and the client, and our hero barber character reveals that he actually went to graduate school and earned a Master's Degree in philosophy.  The comedy that ensues is that the client runs in fear presuming that the fact that his barber is an educated man means he's out to murder him.  Because...  that's what educated people do?

Well, Bruce Lee also had a Master's Degree in philosophy, so maybe he was making some assumption about Kamal Hassan being a fearsome martial arts master.  Sure.  That makes perfect sense.

It's an odd sentiment, though...  that educated people...  the intelligentsia of the world... are somehow the problem individuals.  What exactly do they think will happen?  Last I recall, it's those who are uneducated who tend to be dangerous.  I've never heard of a scientist who killed church officials for spreading lies about science.  Sure, there was that one mathematician who engaged in a 17-year long bombing campaign, but you can't trust those darn mathematicians, anyway ;-).  But nonetheless, there's a common cultural sentiment here.  There's a common response I get from fundies whenever I write about knowledge, education, being scientifically literate, etc.  It is the admonishment that I'm some evil elitist.  By subscribing to this sort of meritocratic philosophy centered around knowledge and the advancement thereof, I and other literati like myself therefore profess a sort of cold-blooded elitism, and that makes them a threat to the "average" person.

Call me crazy...  but I would rather have the average of tomorrow be roughly equal to the borderline genius of today, and if that makes me a threat to the "average" person today, then that's a good thing.

Order Now! Pseudoscientists Are Standing By!

Yesterday, I saw a rather interesting claim in a mattress commercial.  We've all seen the ads for things like memory foam pads and how it "relieves" pressure points that inner spring mattresses cause.  This one had a far more interesting claim.  This one happened to be some mattress that apparently had a gel top-layer, apparently to act a little bit like a waterbed without having to be as expensive or heavy.  So, like every exotic mattress material, though, you'd expect the advertisers claim that it adjusts to your body...  Not this one!  No.  It automatically bio-adjusts to your body!

It...  bio-adjusts?  Bio?  The mattress is alive?  Will it become self-aware?  And here I thought bedbugs might have been an issue, but the beds themselves could be coming to get us.

Oh, but that's just the least of it.  There was another ad I saw on the sidebar of another blog about a waterbed.  And that one distinguishes itself from normal beds by pointing out the value of waterbed mattresses.  The distinction?  "Nothing is more natural than water!"  Wait...  what?  What does that even mean?  We had varying degrees of "natural-ness"?  I guess that means that there's a lot of stuff out there we can't consider quite so natural like trees and air.  Maybe we should also consider things that aren't really substances.  Radiation, for instance...  how much more or less artificial is it than say, electricity?

Maybe instead of a waterbed, we should have a bed filled with all-natural homeopathic medicine...  Oh, wait...

Tennessee Puts a Stop to Science

So the anti-science bill went through and passed in the Tennessee state legislature, and now the Governor of Tennessee (Bill Haslam) has announced that he's basically sure to sign it into law.  Though there is pressure from people who have functioning brains to urge him to veto, it's not really all that likely that he would, or even that it will end there.  And thus will end science in Tennessee public schools.  It's almost that the same state that held the infamous Scopes Trial should also come full circle and now bring creationism and religious horseshit back into the schools.

I'm sure it's easy to make light of the situation since it doesn't cover a whole lot, but that's exactly the reason why it's so subversive.  Much as with SOPA which had very little detail and very vague language -- which in turn made it open to be a lot more dangerous and destructive than was probably designed.  The other thing is that the opportunity to let creationism or anti-vaccine or climate change denialism into the science classroom is there, but it's only really a risk if there is a significant population in the state who would actually lean that way.  If this same law was passed in...  say, Japan, it would probably not even raise a blip...  because anti-science thinking isn't that strong a movement in Japan.

But this is Tennessee...  a "Red" state...  I don't think I need to finish that sentence for people to see that there's a problem.

Friends Don't Let Friends Drive Californian

I'm going to go a bit off the rails here for once.  Normally, when I take on creationists, alt-med hipsters, general stupidity, there is a smoldering grumpiness that is both fueled and tempered by the dogmatic adherence to reason.  This time, however, while reason exists, there will be an overflowing rage with which I write this.  As such, I will preface this posting with a note that what I say here will be dripping with disdain and anger and should be taken with more grains of salt than the usual fare.

That said, it bears being uttered with all the road rage I have at my disposal.

I can't say that I've lived everywhere in this country, and whatever I have to say about the drivers here in the U.S. is in an entirely different league to the abject lawlessness of India.  But currently, I live in California, and I find a rather egregious incompetence to the drivers here.  I mean, I've seen people in Texas go the wrong way on an exit and actually U-turn onto a highway (feeling as well that they have the freedom to do so because they're in a Hummer), and yet somehow, this state does it worse.

Atheists in America

In the comments of an earlier post, a little point came up about nonbelievers who are not so direct and "out there" about their atheism.  Indeed, there is some value in choosing the right time and place to "come out", and there are those who wear their anti-religion stance on their sleeves like myself.  In addition to those who are merely being cautious, there are those who simply want to avoid telling anyone or just say the word "agnostic" in lieu of "atheist" order to save face and/or avoid confrontation entirely.

It kind of begs the question as to why there is such a conflict in the first place?  Here in the United States, especially, you have people who view atheists as being among the most loathsome of all creatures.  In the episode of Family Guy where the dog (Brian) reveals his lack of belief, a news report brands him as "Worse than Hitler?"  The sad part of this is that such a reaction is hardly an exaggeration.  Why should it be that way?  This is supposed to be the country that has more Nobel Laureates than any other.  This is the country where people come to to get the best healthcare on the planet (assuming you have the enormous wealth required to get it).  This is the country which has put men on the moon and created the friggin' Internet.

And yet, this is also the country where state legislatures propose that women who have been raped should be raped one more time by an ultrasound machine so that she can be guilt-tripped out of an abortion.  This is also the country where people paid to provide us with an education believe that the universe has only existed for 6,000 years and man and dinosaurs lived at the same time.  This is also the country where the state which is generally considered to be the most socially liberal in the entire nation still passed a law to outlaw gay marriage.  This is the country where the Constitution demands that no religious test be required for any office in government, and yet there is not a single elected official in government who can avoid a religious test at the hands of its populace.

So what the friggin' hell is America's problem?