Atheist and Christian to 'solve the mystery of the universe' at Midtown ...
Patriot-News
Is it possible for a libertarian Christian and a liberal atheist to talk religion and politics and still remain civil? That's what Adam Murtagh of Mount Joy and Adam Lee of New York City are out to find out during their "Think! (Of God and Government ...

This is no help at all. I need provocative biology questions, not this physics crap.

But hey, if any physics professors want to hand this off to their students, go ahead, give ‘em a laugh.

The prominent Pagan publication called New Scientist states that the “axis of evil” imprinted on the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation is “posing a threat to standard cosmology.” (http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19425994.000-axis-of-evil-a-cause-for-cosmic-concern.html ) The article continues: “According to the standard model, the universe is isotropic, or much the same everywhere. However, in 2005, Kate Land and João Magueijo of Imperial College London noticed a curious pattern in the map of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) created by NASA’s WMAP satellite. It seemed to show that some hot and cold spots in the CMB are not distributed randomly, as expected, but are aligned along what Magueijo dubbed the axis of evil.”

The Pagans say concerning the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation ( http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327245.900-13-more-things-axis-of-evil.htm#.Uqeo0lNi30R ) “WHAT would you do if you found a mysterious and controversial pattern in the radiation”: “In 2005, Kate Land and João Magueijo at Imperial College London faced just such a conundrum. What they did next was a PR master stroke: they called their discovery the cosmic “axis of evil.” Now why is it called evil? The Pagans answer the question: “The apparent alignment is “evil” because it undermines what we thought we knew about the… universe. Modern cosmology is built on the assumption that the universe is essentially the same in whichever direction we look. If the cosmic radiation has a preferred direction, that assumption may have to go – along with our best theories about cosmic history.” The Pagans then admitted that they are terrorized by the ‘axis of evil’ by saying: “The European Space Agency’s recently launched Planck space telescope might settle the issue when it makes the most sensitive maps yet of the CMB. Until then, the axis of evil continues to terrorise us.”

PS. Results from the WMAP satellite (early 2000s) indicated that when looking at large scales of the universe, the CMB could be partitioned into “hot” and “cold” sections- and this partitioning is aligned with our ecliptic plane and equinoxes. This partitioning and alignment resulted in an axis through the universe which “scientists” dubbed “the axis of evil”- because of the damage it does to their myths. This axis passes right through our tiny portion of the universe. Laurence Krauss commented in 2005:“ But when you look at [the cosmic microwave background] map, you also see that the structure that is observed, is in fact, in a weird way, correlated with the plane of the earth around the sun. Is this Copernicus coming back to haunt us? That’s crazy. We’re looking out at the whole universe. There’s no way there should be a correlation of structure with our motion of the earth around the sun — the plane of the earth around the sun — the ecliptic. That would say we are truly the center of the universe.” (http://www.edge.org/conversation/the-energy-of-empty-space-that-isn-39t-zero )

Most “scientists” brushed the scientific observation off as a fluke of some type, and many myth-theories were created to explain it away. Many awaited the Planck mission. The Planck satellite was looked upon as a referee for these unexpected (and unwelcome) results. The Planck satellite used different sensor technology and an improved scanning pattern to map the CMB. In March 2013, Planck reported back and in fact verified the presence of the signal in even higher definition than before! There is Absolutely No Salvation Outside the Catholic Church see www.vaticancatholic.com Geocentrism is absolutely irrefutable.

He followed up with another message an hour later.

Heliocentrism is a myth There is Absolutely No salvation Outside the Church visit www.vaticancatholic.com According to the evolutionist myth called heliocentrism the earth revolves around the sun traveling at speeds of 65,000+ miles is each hour which equates to approximately 20 miles per second while spinning on its axis 2,000 miles per hour. Science disproved heliocentricism centuries ago and decades ago and continues to do so.
Remember: Every experiment designed to measure the speed of the earth through space has always returned a speed of zero just as the Bible claimed all along. All the MMX experiments and related experiments of the late 19th and early 20th centuries showed prima facie evidence that the Earth wasn’t moving around the sun – and this continued to be the case with every repeat of an MMX-type experiment from 1881 to 1932 when the last one was done. That is science. That is irrefutable. Michelson did the experiment again and again and again because he was absolutely devastated by the results. He did it again with a man named Dayton C. Miller in 1904. Dayton Miller decided to go on his own track and was so devastated that the earth was Geocentric that he did 100,000 experiments with even more sophisticated and sensitive equipment– compared to 36 MMX experiments done by Michelson-Morley: and he got the same results. Dayton earned a doctorate in science from Princeton University in 1890, was president of the American Physical Society during 1925-1926, chairman of the National Research Council’s Division of Physical Sciences from 1927 to 1930, and president of the Acoustical Society of America from 1913 to 1933.

The Michelson-Gale-Pearson experiment (1925) which is a Sagnac and Morley Michelson (MMX) experiment in one: debunked relativity and heliocentrism. The Sagnac experiment scientifically demonstrated ‘Absolute Motion.’ It debunked Einstein’s “relative motion” myth with his myths of “general and special relativity.” The Sagnac experiment absolutely devastates ‘relativity’ mythology.
Ronald R. Hatch is a recipient of the Johannes Kepler Award from the Institute of Navigation because he was the most significant contributor to the advancement of satellite navigation. He has over 30 years experience in designing navigation systems and has been consulted by government agencies and companies. He authored Escape from Einstein – a work which debunks the relativity myth and other related myths. He brought up the issue of the GPS programming and what NASA does with the old experiments that disprove Einstein’s special myth of relativity and also heliocentrism. Ronald R. Hatch the Director of Navigation Systems engineering and founder of NavCom Technology, Inc had to go and investigate line by line how NASA was constructing the computer data or computer programs- rather- for the positioning satellites. What he found was that NASA -without telling people– preprogrammed the computers of the global positioning satellites to include the Sagnac effect. Sagnac did his experiment in 1913 and established and demonstrated that since motion is absolute – that means it is not relative. It was a very phenomenal experiment because it proved motion was absolute. Believers in Einsteinian mythology cannot get away from this and that is why they have to preprogram their computers for the Sagnac effect of absolute motion without telling anybody – and then they say that the global positioning satellites are working by the special “theory” of relativity. The global positioning satellites disprove the special “theory” of relativity because if those computer programs of the GPS were not preprogrammed for the Sagnac effect – in other words if they were not adjusted for the fact that there was absolute motion – then the GPS wouldn’t work.

Now what they have found between GPS satellites in space – is that they worked in foursomes. They have 3 up in space at any one time and they have the ground station. When a signal is sent from one in-orbit GPS into another GPS in orbit to get the triangulation that is needed: the light beam that goes from west to east travels 50 nanoseconds slower than the light beam traveling from east to west. That may not seem much but if you add up 50 nanoseconds for every beam that is sank from one satellite to another: in a day’s period the typical GPS would be off by 15 miles. They have a certain parameter that they have to fit into and so they have to measure these things in nanoseconds- it’s a pretty intricate calculation- but that’s what they discovered. Now why is that the case? If light always travels at c as Einstein told us then why are these GPS beams coming back at different times – 50 nanoseconds worth? Therefore the GPS has just falsified the special “theory” of relativity. In other words the global positioning satellites are just one big Michelson-Morley experiment or its one big Sagnac Experiment –and they thus adjust the computers based on what Sagnac found in 1913. That’s the story for you. That should make headlines but you won’t find it in headlines of course because the aura around special and general relativity is so great – not only to answer Michelson-Morley experiments but is the absolute foundational basis for all of Pagan cosmology today. Everything you hear about: the big bag, and the expansion, and dark matter, and dark energy, and inflation and all these terms you hear are for one reason only: because everything has to be fit into the tensor equations of Albert Einstein g= 8PiT – that’s the reason why. That all comes from general relativity which is the next step. Special relativity was invented in 1905 to answer the amazing Michelson-Morley experiments – in order to keep the earth moving around the sun and then we begin to see flaws in special relativity and one of the major flaws of course is it doesn’t deal with gravity. If special relativity dealt with uniform motion – that is motion that’s going the same all the time or you are standing still – that’s called an inertial frame. What happens when you are accelerating however, or what happens when you are decelerating, what happens when you meet up with inertial forces like centrifugal force, or Coriolis force, Euler force: well things change. Now you have to have a whole new “theory” and that’s why Einstein had to develop the general “theory” of relativity because he had to answer gravity and inertial forces. Where do these things come from? Well general relativity proposes to give us an answer and it says space is warped, and time is warped by matter, and all kinds of things like that- these are totally unproven too- but that’s just the “theory.” That’s why it’s still called the “theory” of general relativity because none of this has been proven. It has been debunked. There is Absolutely No Salvation Outside the Catholic Church see www.vaticancatholic.com

Man, Catholics. They’re still plaguing my inbox.

Don’t feel bad for Megyn Kelly. Jon Stewart exposes her stupidity with wonderful thoroughness… And you might be thinking, “No way can she show up in public without the pointing and laughing,” but keep in mind that she’s a Fox News host. Blithering obliviousness is part of the job description. Besides, on the same day she got this lovely tongue-bath from the Washington Post. I see that journalistic standards at the WaPo are roughly equivalent to those at the HuffPo.

When atheist billboards and Muslim veils are both under threat, we need ...
The Globe and Mail
Such equality and neutrality demand that religious, secular and even atheist forms of expression be accorded the same respect. In 2009 city governments across Canada banned atheist bus advertisements as too offensive for the public square. These ...

and more »

And you know what that means? The last assignments all come in today, and all the students want to know what their grades are right now. I’m stocking up on red pens and planning to retreat to an undisclosed location to mark up papers until my eyes bleed.

Reporter Calls the Atheist Cops on Florida Nativity Scene
NewsBusters (blog)
Reporter Calls the Atheist Cops on Florida Nativity Scene. By Tim Graham | December 13, 2013 | 07:11. A A. Tim Graham's picture. Matthew Archbold at Creative Minority Report passed along that "A reporter for a small town in Florida went on a crusade to ...
Officials Refuse to Back Down in Battle With Atheists Over Florida City's ...TheBlaze.com
Fla. City Officials Refuse to Remove Nativity Scene Following Atheist Threat ...Christian Post

all 7 news articles »

Atheist group erects 'A' at Chicago holiday market
Dekalb Daily Chronicle
An 8 1/2- foot tall letter "A," which stands for atheist or agnostic, erected by the Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation, is on display Tuesday at the annual Christmas market in Chicago's Daley Plaza. Members of the group said it's meant ...

and more »

Atheist group puts up 'A' at Chicago holiday market
Northwest Herald
An 8 1/2-foot-tall letter "A," which stands for atheist or agnostic, erected by the Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation, is on display Tuesday at the annual Christmas market in Chicago's Daley Plaza. Members of the group say it's meant to ...

and more »

TheBlaze.com
Atheists Take Aim at 'Keep Christ in Christmas' Banner With a Holiday Message ...
TheBlaze.com
A “Keep Christ in Christmas” sign in a New Jersey borough has sparked a two-year fight over church-state separatism — one that has led the Freedom From Religion Foundation, a secular activist group, to post a holiday response on a nearby billboard.
'Keep Saturn in Saturnalia' Atheist Billboard Seeks to Counter 'Keep Christ in ...Christian Post

all 8 news articles »

It’s a clear case of suicide. Jesus Huerta died of a gunshot wound to the head. While in a police car. Handcuffed. With his hands cuffed behind his back.

A Durham teen died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, Durham Police Chief Jose Lopez said Wednesday afternoon at a news conference.

Lopez held a 3 p.m. news conference and started by extending condolences to the family of Jesus Huerta, who died in a police cruiser in November. Huerta was 17.

He said the noise heard by the officer was a gunshot, and said it was a gunshot wound to the head.

Lopez said a handgun was found in the car and that Huerta was still handcuffed from behind. He said the wound was self-inflicted.

Mr Huerta’s amazing physical talents will be missed. To not only be able to contort his limbs in a way that I can’t even imagine, but to be able to make large metal objects mysteriously appear in his presence…he must have been the greatest magician who ever existed. A rival to Houdini.

At least we still have Chief Jose Lopez, who has to have the greatest poker face in the world to be able to make that announcement. Don’t ever play cards with him!

Besides, if you did win by some miracle, you might have an incredible accident afterwards.

There are some serious problems with how Twitter handles blocking — in particular, if I block some obnoxious twit, but they post to a hashtag I follow (a conference hashtag, for instance), their messages are still displayed. This is the major reason why the BlockBot emerged — that automated widget that simply refuses to display tweets from a collection of known harassers, so that you can follow it instead of the hashtag — because Twitter won’t do the job.

Now, finally, Twitter gets around to changing the blocking behavior …and makes it worse. It used to be blocking someone also made them unfollow you, which made it very slightly harder for the harassers to stalk you. Apparently, inconveniencing assholes was intolerable to Twitter, so they’ve now changed it so blocking only mutes them, but still allows them to easily follow your every word, flag your tweets, and echo them to their clinging flock of fellow harassers. The harassers are now simply made invisible to the people they want to harass.

Imagine if the police were this helpful, and if you complained about someone and asked for protection, their response would be to magically make them invisible for you.

Why did they do this? I have no idea, except that there must be some assholes on the Twitter staff, which should surprise no one.

It’s probably futile, but there’s a petition asking them to stop making life easier for the jerks. I have no confidence they’ll listen or care, but go ahead, ask Twitter nicely.

Otherwise…hey, world, did you know there’s an available niche for a twitter-like service that also offers reasonable blocking and a little protection for users, and that doesn’t pander to misogynistic scumbags? They really could use some competition.

I found someone who likes the new policy (warning: links to creep pretending to masturbate…and just the description is enough, don’t you think?) That’s what we’re dealing with. That’s who Twitter’s policy panders to.

Twitter has reversed their changes. They’ve got a rather weird explanation for the earlier change, though.

In reverting this change to the block function, users will once again be able to tell that they’ve been blocked. We believe this is not ideal, largely due to the retaliation against blocking users by blocked users (and sometimes their friends) that often occurs. Some users worry just as much about post-blocking retaliation as they do about pre-blocking abuse. Moving forward, we will continue to explore features designed to protect users from abuse and prevent retaliation.

WTF? So I was supposed to worry that harassers I block might retaliate by…what? More online harassment? I assure you, they were going to do that anyway.

Meet the comedians behind “Atheist Mingle”
Religion News Service
But what about atheists looking for love? It seems there are a few atheist dating websites, though after a quick glance it's difficult to tell how active they actually are. And while apparently atheists receive more responses than theists on dating ...

Northwest Herald
Atheist group erects 'A' at Chicago holiday market
Bloomington Pantagraph
Adorned with red lights that make it look a bit like a misshapen candy cane, the big "A" stands for atheist or agnostic. The Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation erected it this holiday season to send the message that it believes religious ...
Atheist group puts up 'A' at Chicago holiday marketNorthwest Herald

all 14 news articles »

Atheist group erects 'A' at Chicago holiday market
Beaumont Enterprise
In this Tuesday, Dec. 10, 2013 photo, an 8-and-a-half foot tall letter "A," which stands for Atheist or Agnostic, erected by the Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation, is on display at the annual Christmas market in Chicago's Daley Plaza ...

and more »

This is the lounge. You can discuss anything you want, but you will do it kindly.

Status: Heavily Moderated; Previous thread

One law for them, another for us. A tragic and fatal accident leads to an obscenely rich child, Ethan Couch, going to trial.

Prosecutors said the boy was driving seven of his friends in his Ford F-350 on June 15 when the car collided with a group of people on the side of the road on the outskirts of Fort Worth. They were Breanna Mitchell of Lillian, Tex., whose car had broken down, Brian Jennings, and Hollie and Shelby Boyles, who had come to her assistance, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported. All four were killed, and two passengers in the truck were critically injured.

The boy pleaded guilty last week to manslaughter and assault while intoxicated. He had been speeding, and had Valium and a high level of alcohol in his blood, according to testimony.

Even with the excuse of youth — the boy was 16 — this is an egregious crime exacerbated by the irresponsible use of drugs. Prosecutors recommended a 20 year jail sentence; his wealthy parents hired a psychologist who argued that it was all the parents’ fault, and that he was spoiled rotten.

“He never learned that sometimes you don’t get your way,” Miller said. “He had the cars and he had the money. He had freedoms that no young man would be able to handle.”

He used the term “affluenza,” which describes the ennui and depravity of certain very rich people, and which was popularized by psychologist Oliver James in a 2007 book by the same title.

The end result? For killing 4 people and maiming two others, he got probation.

The boy will be sent to a private home near Newport Beach, Calif. that offers intensive therapy. His parents will pay for the therapy, which can cost $450,000 a year or more.

All hail the Ancien Régime!

Atheist struggles to explain the pagan origins of Christmas to Fox News
Raw Story
In the video embedded below, American Atheists, Inc. president David Silverman and Marius Forté — co-author of the book The Answer: Proof of God in Heaven — went head-to-head about the Christian faith and its wholesale appropriation of the winter ...

and more »

Man, they must select Fox News commentators for racism as well as stupidity. Here’s a video of Megyn Kelly indignantly arguing on an important issue: Santa Claus must be white.

She’s offended that someone suggested that we could have a black Santa Claus.

Santa just is white. But this person is maybe just arguing that we should also have a black Santa.

Hint to Planet Fox: Santa is a fictitious, imaginary character. There really isn’t a man who appears on Christmas eve to clamber down your chimney, so it’s absurd to argue about his skin color, or gender, or species, or whether its biochemistry is carbon-based. He doesn’t exist. Personally, I prefer to imagine that Santa just snakes a tentacle down a ventilation duct — it gets around the logistical issues neatly, and it also increases efficiency at apartment complexes, since he can multitask.

But Kelly has historical precedent! Here’s her slam-dunk counter-argument.

You know, I mean, Jesus was a white man, too. He was a historical figure; that’s a verifiable fact—as is Santa, I want you kids watching to know that—but my point is: How do you revise it, in the middle of the legacy of the story, and change Santa from white to black?

So, Megyn Kelly, do you have a picture of Jesus? One from, say, 30 AD? I’d like to see it, since after all you’re so confident that there is verifiable, historical evidence for his existence, as well as his ethnic status as a White Man.

I’d also like to point out that by Christian mythology, Jesus is currently in an incorporeal state, somehow inexplicably oscillating in some incomprehensible quantum-like state with his dad and a ghost. You can tell me exactly how you determined the melanocyte density in his invisible skin right after you explain the Trinity to me.

You must read this twitter exchange about the whiteness of Santa. It just gets weirder and weirder.

Chris Mooney has done it again: he has rationalized a piece of the conventional wisdom to support the status quo and to make it harder to break the creationist habit. He has an article on Mother Jones titled
Seven Evolutionary Reasons People Deny Evolution, and I gakked at every word, from the linkbait in the first word to the presumption of the second to the obvious promise of self-justification in the third.

And I let it go.

It’s Mooney, after all. But then Larry Moran is getting on his case, and Hemant Mehta has been hoodwinked into accepting this nonsense, so I feel compelled to dig into it. One interesting thing about the article, though, is that Mooney is unself-consciously practicing the same delusions he claims are natural in putting his argument together — you’d think he’d be a little bit aware…but no.

Let us begin with the last and work backwards through the essay. It’s his conclusion that pissed me off the most.

In any event, the evidence is clear that both our cognitive architecture, and also our emotional dispositions, make it difficult or unnatural for many people to accept evolution. “Natural selection is like quantum physics…we might intellectually grasp it, with considerable effort, but it will never feel right to us,” writes the Yale psychologist Paul Bloom. Often, people express surprise that in an age so suffused with science, science causes so much angst and resistance.

Oh, really?

I was brought up Lutheran, and got the full weekly dose of church and Sunday School; I was also a zealous reader from an early age, and discovered the science section of my local library when I was probably in first or second grade. I was exposed to both religion and science from an early age, and guess which one I found difficult and unnatural to grasp? That’s right. Somehow, these people think recognizing natural causes in the world around us, something we experience every moment of our lives, is difficult, while accepting the existence of magical, supernatural forces that we never ever see is “natural”.

Yet there I am at 8 years old, given a choice between a book about Noah’s Ark and Jesus, or one of Asimov’s collections of science essays, and there’s no question, no doubt in my mind, no niggling worries or hesitation — I choose Asimov every time, hands down. If I do read the Ark book (because I was bored and eventually devoured everything), it’s with arched brow and child-like incredulousness, because the story is so goddamned stupid.

And now, as an adult, I not only intellectually grasp what we know about evolution, it feels right to me.

That either makes me a super-powered mutant, or that someone has got everything all wrong in their attempt to make the argument that religion is natural and evolved, and perhaps I’m just a mundane, ordinary guy who had a freedom to explore ideas not usually granted to most people, and that all the barriers to the acceptance of evolution are artificial, cultural, and recently imposed.

I assume most of my readers here also accept the idea of evolution. So which is it? Are we all special little flowers, the shining brilliant lucky recipients of a wisdom-bestowing mutation, while hoi polloi are dullard turds lacking in our biologically glorious powers, or do essentially all humans have capable, plastic brains capable of responding to the environment in reasonable (if limited) ways? I rather lean towards the latter view, as flattering as the former might be. I’m pushed even further towards that view by the bad arguments Mooney gives.

But first, let’s dismiss a standard rhetorical trick: before you give your grand conclusion, bring out a couple of caveats that you can dismiss. It gives the appearance that you’ve carefully weighed the evidence and have examined the opposition position. Mooney does not fail. He dredges up two irrelevant counter-arguments.

First, this doesn’t mean science and religion are fundamentally incompatible. The conflict may run very deep indeed, but nevertheless, some individuals can and do find a way to retain their religious beliefs and also accept evolution—including the aforementioned biology textbook author Kenneth Miller of Brown University, a Catholic.

You cannot know how much I despise the Ken Miller Argument. Not Miller himself, of course, but this weird happy relief people seem to find in dragging him out and gleefully pointing at his Catholicism and his science credentials. They are irrelevant to the point that science and religion are incompatible — people are complex and embody all kinds of contradictions. You simply cannot point to a single human being as a test for the logical incompatibility of two ideas. That presupposes that we’re capable of nothing but rational thought, and that our brains contain flawless logic circuits that do not allow clashing ideas to exist in our heads.

What would be interesting and relevant would be to ask Miller, or any scientist no matter what their religious beliefs, whether they found evolutionary thinking difficult or unnatural. Mooney does not do this, despite the fact that it is the only question relevant to his premise. He does raise a second irrelevant caveat, though.

Second, while there are many reasons to think that the traits above [his list of properties that predispose us to religion --pzm] comprise a core part of who we are, it doesn’t automatically follow that religion is the direct result of evolution by natural selection. It is also possible that religion arises as a byproduct of more basic traits that were, in turn, selected for because they conferred greater fitness (such as agency detection). This “byproduct” view is defended by Steven Pinker here.

I personally think the byproduct explanation is the best one I’ve heard, but so what? It says that religion exploits properties of the mind that evolved for other reasons. We could say exactly the same thing of mathematics: we didn’t evolve to solve calculus problems, there has never been significant selection pressure for people whose expertise is specifically in calculus, but we do have some properties — a surplus of capacity, perhaps, or general flexibility — that could be reworked by experience to enable the exercise of mathematics. Is math natural or unnatural?

But when you actually think about it, it is a killer argument against Mooney’s thesis…it’s too bad that he doesn’t think about it much at all. What does it even mean to talk about “natural” or “evolved” cognitive traits, like religion or science? Mooney is blithely talking about a “core part of who we are”, while describing culturally conditioned superficial myths held by a tribe of talking apes, all while ignoring the fact that his core traits are not universal.

Let’s consider his list of natural core.

Fear and the Need for Certainty. Finally, there appears to be something about fear and doubt that impels religiosity and dispels acceptance of evolution. “People seem to take more comfort from a stance that says, someone designed the world with good intentions, instead of that the world is just an intention-less, random place,” says Norenzayan. “This is especially true when we feel a sense of threat, or a feeling of not being in control.”

Fear and uncertainty are real — even us self-confident happy atheists have to deal with them. Every one of us has felt loss and grief, and we know that these are also great tools to use to manipulate people. But take it a step further. Fear is a universal, but how we cope with it is variable. This person Norenzayan is making an assertion that religious thinking is an evolved coping strategy for dealing with fear, but none of the evidence given supports that claim. It does support the idea that people with religious concepts stuck in their head tend to reinforce those concepts when stressed.

But that statement by Norenzayan is ridiculous. You’re in a difficult situation: which is more reassuring, the idea that a) it’s an accident of chance, or b) there really is a super-powerful being who is doing this on purpose to you? If you’re just looking for a good way to deal with your troubles, I find (a) immensely more comforting than (b). And when I have experienced stress and suffering, I don’t find myself suddenly looking for a supernatural agent out to get me. That view is a product of long cultural conditioning.

Turn this view on Mooney: he lives in a world full of superstitious people. How to explain this uncomfortable situation? Why, there must be an external agency, evolution, that has shaped them to be inimical to science.

Group Morality and Tribalism. All of these cognitive factors seem to make evolution hard to grasp, even as they render religion (or creationist ideas) simpler and more natural to us. But beyond these cognitive factors, there are also emotional reasons why a lot of people don’t want to believe in evolution. When we see resistance to its teaching, after all, it is usually because a religious community fears that this body of science will undermine a belief system—in the US, usually fundamentalist Christianity—deemed to serve as the foundation for shared values and understanding. In other words, evolution is resisted because it is perceived as a threat to the group.

Again, tribalism is real, and we apes do turn to our friendly support groups all the time, and we need our social glue to live happily. Nothing in this predisposes people to think religiously rather than scientifically, however. That we allow and encourage our fellow apes to cultivate their own peculiar rituals and behaviors to forge coherence actually says that those individual sets of rules are arbitrary, not determined. We can make subtribes within the human community that are bound together by religion, by atheism, by science (yes, science certainly does have its quaint bonding practices), or by such things as anime fandom.

Place the blame where it belongs. Not on human tribalism, but on the fact that a huge, successful, widespread binding factor, religion, also frequently imposes absurdly anti-scientific views on its members. And even there, the blame must be apportioned to historical contingencies, not fixed inevitabilities.

Turn this view on Mooney: he’s arguing for a tribe that cannot grasp basic principles of science for biological reasons. Yet I suspect that he does not place himself in the category of a person doomed to struggle against the unnatural weirdness of science. It’s always comforting to separate the other, the Creationists, from ourselves, the Scientists, isn’t it? But I can tell you that they’re just as smart and capable as we are — just that their intelligence is shunted off in unproductive directions.

Inability to Comprehend Vast Time Scales. According to Norenzayan, there’s one more basic cognitive factor that prevents us from easily understanding evolution. Evolution occurred due to the accumulation of many small changes over vast time periods—which means that it is unlike anything we’ve experienced. So even thinking about it isn’t very easy. “The only way you can appreciate the process of evolution is in an abstract way,” says Norenzayan. “Over millions of years, small changes accumulate, but it’s not intuitive. There’s nothing in our brain that says that’s true. We have to override our incredulity.”

I will give him this: I cannot imagine the magnitude of millions of years. Billions are right out. Heck, even a thousand years is a strain.

But I find it bizarre to argue that visualizing the accumulation of small changes is not intuitive — it’s actually imbedded deeply in the human experience. Every child knows that once they were a baby, and talks about growing up; Mom and Dad make a pencil mark on the door jamb for our height every year; we go through that awkward transition at puberty, and then we spend the rest of our life aging, feeling every creak and every fading ability. Old people rail against this new generation and praise the previous one. We live lives full of change, and usually spend our time complaining about it.

“Once things were different” is such a natural and easy sentiment that it is perverse to suddenly claim that no one thinks that way. That we have a hard time appreciating the magnitude of time over which changes occur is one thing; but inability to perceive change? Pfft.

Turn this view on Mooney: One thing I often find irritating in discussions of creationism are all these people who think the creationism of the last 60 years is the way religion has always been. Go back a century, and you might be surprised: deeply religious people were struggling to reconcile faith and science, and you don’t typically find that the depth of the geological record was a serious obstacle. You don’t find that change was a problem: the book of Genesis is all about a rather abrupt change, and of course theologians are dab hands at rationalizing and accepting the grand changes we see in the shift from the Old Testament to the New. Young Earth Creationism, as practiced in America today, is a relatively new and odd phenomenon.

Dualism. Yet another apparent feature of our cognitive architecture is the tendency to think that minds (or the “self” and the “soul”) are somehow separate from brains. Once again, this inclination has been found in young children, suggesting that it emerges early in human development. “Preschool children will claim that the brain is responsible for some aspects of mental life, typically those involving deliberative mental work, such as solving math problems,” write Yale psychologists Paul Bloom and Deena Skolnick Weisberg. “But preschoolers will also claim that the brain is not involved in a host of other activities, such as pretending to be a kangaroo, loving one’s brother, or brushing one’s teeth.”

This is another one that I will grant to Mooney, to a degree. Consciousness is a ubiquitous illusion, and it is all about taking a material substrate, the brain, and generating a perception of a self-aware monitor floating above it all. It’s a hardware/software distinction, in many ways, and it’s natural to interpret others’ behavior with a theory of mind.

But I gotta love studies that rely on the perspectives of pre-schoolers. Babies love to play peek-a-boo, and are endlessly surprised when you open your hands and…and there you are! Giggle and coo! But you know, when we get older, we would consider it grossly unnatural if an individual failed to acquire the concept of object permanence. Did you know that human minds mature over time? Inclinations in young children are not necessarily likely to be held by adults.

Also, creationists and religious people are not children, nor do they have child-like brains. Give ‘em some credit, they can learn and adapt and grow just like us Grown-Up-Sciencey-Types.

Turn this view on Mooney: Grow up.

Overactive Agency Detection. But how do you know the designer is “God”? That too may be the result of a default brain setting.

Another trait, closely related to teleological thinking, is our tendency to treat any number of inanimate objects as if they have minds and intentions. Examples of faulty agency detection, explains University of British Columbia origins of religion scholar Ara Norenzayan, range from seeing “faces in the clouds” to “getting really angry at your computer when it starts to malfunction.” People engage in such “anthropomorphizing” all the time; it seems to come naturally. And it’s a short step to religion: “When people anthropomorphize gods, they are inferring mental states,” says Norenzayan.

Yes? Isn’t that what we were just talking about under Dualism? The logic of listicles is always reinforced when you use a magic number like 7 or 10, isn’t it?

It is true, I have been known to snarl at the TV (especially on, say, Sunday morning, when the pundits are babbling, or when I accidentally flip through Fox News), even though it is an inanimate object that is not responsible for the idiocy displayed on it. But you know, my mind is slightly less literal-minded than the story makes it out to be: even when my irrational side is getting tickled by the provocation of the noises from the magic box on the wall or the shapes of clouds, I’m quite able to draw myself up short and recognize reality. I know that turning the television off does not make the annoying people disappear, and that the bunny hopping about in the sky is no threat to my salad. While we recognize that the brain contains fallible perception generators, could we please also recognize that the brain also has more sophisticated processors to interpret those phenomena? And guess what — creationists and religious people also have them!

Where I object is that “short step to religion”. Fine; we can see that it’s an easy first step. But when I take a step, I try to keep on walking. What’s unnatural is take a step and then just stop when there’s a wide open path ahead of me. Why assume that those Religious Others are incapable of thinking beyond first impressions? Why not assume that they are just as capable of going on beyond that preliminary, primitive perception?

Turn this view on Mooney: It’s always tempting to find that first confirming impression and stop. No need to think further, we’ve already got the answer. It’s particularly tempting when we’ve got a thesis that we want affirmed, and there it is: by golly, I have grumbled at my computer, therefore, GOD is an entirely reasonable conclusion. Keep on walking, Mooney, there are more steps beyond the first.

Teleological Thinking. Essentialism is just one basic cognitive trait, observed in young children, that seems to hinder evolutionary thinking. Another is “teleology,” or the tendency to ascribe purposes to things and objects so as to assume they exist to serve some goal.

Recent research suggests that 4 and 5 year old children are highly teleological in their thinking, tending to opine, for instance, that clouds are “for raining” and that the purpose of lions is “to go in the zoo.” The same tendency has been observed in 7 and 8 year olds who, when asked why “prehistoric rocks are pointy,” offered answers like “so that animals could scratch on them when they got itchy” and “so that animals wouldn’t sit on them and smash them.”

Oh, jebus, more kiddie minds. Could we stop this please? Religious people aren’t primitive children. A lot of religious thinking is abstract, convoluted, elaborate, and sophisticated — it’s also deeply flawed, but let’s not pretend that we can find the roots of Catholic or Jewish theology in the simplistic thinking of seven year olds. The Summa Theologica, the Talmud, and the Hadiths are not one-off guesses produced by some kids on the playground at the prompting of psychologists. They are highly unnatural (in the sense that Mooney is using the word) products of exquisitely higher order thinking on the part of thousands of people deeply imbedded in an elaborate cultural tradition.

Simplistic biases like those we see in those kids are easily overcome. I’m an example, so is Mooney, so is Ken Miller, so is every scientist brought up in a Christian or Jewish or Muslim or Hindu society. That isn’t the problem. The problem lies in very detailed rationalizations assembled by scholars and leaders and influential social messengers that might play on intrinsic biases in our thinking, but I would say that that is also true of science. Shall we argue that Newtonian laws are built on our childlike appreciation of “funny man falls down” slapstick? That would be just as naive.

Turn this view on Mooney: You’re looking for intent and purpose in the pervasiveness of religious thought; you’re seeking simple causal agents behind a presumed bias towards religion. Have you considered the possibility that you’re engaging in the same teleological thinking that you’re labeling as a foundation for religion?

Biological Essentialism. First, we seem to have a deep tendency to think about biology in a way that is “essentialist”—in other words, assuming that each separate kind of animal species has a fundamental, unique nature that unites all members of that species, and that is inviolate. Fish have gills, birds have wings, fish make more fish, birds make more birds, and that’s how it all works. Essentialist thinking has been demonstrated in young children. “Little kids as young as my 2 and a half year old granddaughter are quite clear that puppies don’t have ponies for mommies and daddies,” explains McCauley.

“we seem to have a deep tendency to think about biology”…stop right there. We do? People think deeply about biology? Really?

Biologists think deeply about biology, and thinking deeply about biology seems to have produced the theory of evolution. Thinking superficially about the causes and origins of species, treating them as merely descriptive categories of convenience, seems to have produced creationism. Again with the little kids — are we seriously going to consider that 2½ year old kids have been “thinking deeply” about biology?

There are other people who think deeply about biology — hunters, for instance, or farmers. And they come up with schemes that also group animals and plants in patterns, but they generally aren’t trying to explain origins, but behavior. It’s when you actually think about where things come from that the assumptions of pre-schoolers begin to readily fall apart.

Turn this view on Mooney: Mooney has long been an opponent of “data dump” science, the idea that merely educating people about science is sufficient to persuade them to abandon religion. I’m somewhat sympathetic to that myself; it does take more than just hammering with facts to get an idea accepted. But I would also suggest that one major problem with Mooney’s argument is that he is so willing to assume that the first impressions of children represent deep thoughts — that he doesn’t seem to appreciate the importance of data and evidence in shaping how people think. This stuff matters. I am not the boy I was who first stepped into a library. Learning is actually central to the human experience.

Our cognitive architecture and emotional dispositions are certainly natural and biological, but they can equally well incline us to accept natural explanations as well as supernatural ones — we are shaped by our experiences as well as crude preliminary suppositions. The argument that religion is more “natural” than science is a bow to the naturalistic fallacy and a nod towards the status quo. Do not try to tell me that my mode of thinking, as easy and simply as I fell into it (and as readily as many in the scientific community similarly find it) is somehow weird, unnatural, inhuman, or in defiance of my evolved instincts. It is not. Every person has the capacity to think scientifically or religiously or even both, and there are modes of thought that are not limited by the presumptions of our particular culture as well.

It is a logical failure to assume that what is is what must be, or that the currently dominant elements of our culture are representative of how the human mind must work.

Dorr atheist wants removal of 'rogue' nativity scene
The Grand Rapids Press - MLive.com
Jeremiah Bannister, who describes himself as an atheist, said the religious symbols have no place in the gazebo, which Township Supervisor Jeff Miling said was constructed by the township on land leased from a private individual by the Downtown ...