Some of the things you’ll hear do sound a little bit far fetched, I’ll admit that. But then I found out that the other name for the bible is “The Gospel”. So it is all true. Luckily, the clue is in the title.

Ahh… the old “the bible’s true because it says so” argument… put much more eloquently, of course.

Link to Video

(Via Luke Pilarski)

Link to Video

I can’t imagine the atheist community would have anything important to confront them about? (*cough* evolution *cough*) Anyone skilled with a camera, and able to present a good case in 30 seconds or so?

If you’ve got some ideas, check out http://www.youtube.com/debates

(via Slashdot)

Anybody see the correlation?

(Via The Consumerist)

• 7 Proofs That We Live in a Computer Simulation – or Why Proofs of Gods Existance Are Unconvicing
• Why I took so long to accept evolution – a.k.a. Why every christian should read their own bible. “part of what helped me along was actually reading the Bible in high school, being horrified by much of it”
• denialism blog : I can has souls? – There is a god, and it’s a cat.
• Religion and Sexual Ethics – A nice summary of the moral position of various religions. Interesting to compare catholicism and buddhism side by side! (I think I’m with the Buddhists, here)
• LOL cat Bible – Personally, I hate this pathetic LOLspeak crap, although this picture is funny… “In teh beginning, Invisible Man make univerz. Invisible Man say, I can has light. Gots light.”

• Letter to the Editor: Kick the Atheists out of America – “I don’t care if they have never committed a crime, atheists are the reason crime is rampant.”
• Philosophy and the proof of God’s existence by Roger Jones – A nice summary of many of the traditional “proofs” of God’s existance, including the argument from design, pascals wager, and the philosophies of Kant, Hegal and others.
• What Evolution Left Behind On Humans – “I?ve always been fascinated with human evolution. To me, the most fascinating part of human evolution is learning about what was ?left behind? on our bodies from our ancestors and from our prenatal development.”
• Wife Beating – It?s therapeutic – I’m glad someone’s cleared this up. Wife beating is not a rule, it’s just therapeutic. Oh, but there are limits!
• Pharyngula: They’re running out of virgins! – Nice tasteless video about terrorists debating how many virgins they get in paradise

• What if the Women of the Bible Had All Been Feminists? – “After the ladies loosen up around the table, Mary Magdalene would begin by talking about sex workers? rights, and returning belly dancing to its origin as an exercise for giving birth.”
• Intelligent Design Ruled “Not Science” – Thank God! (pun intended) At least ID is officially not science in the UK.
• Calvin & Hobbs: Do you think there’s a God? – Calvin and Hobbs on God.
• FSM on Calculator – How to draw the Flying Spaghetti Monster on your TI graphing calculator
• Non Sequitur – Moses – Moses using MapQuest Version 1.0 (BC) to lead the Jews through the desert
• Paris finds God in jail | Herald Sun – So that’s where God’s been hiding…

Creationist: You can’t prove evolution is true, 100%.

Me: But evolution has been proved true beyond a reasonable doubt. It’s like in court, to prove a defendant is guilty, the jury needs to decide that it is beyond a reasonable doubt that the claim is true.

Creationist: A ha! But innocent people are sent to jail all the time!

Me: Okay, but imagine a different court. In this one, a juror has to first pass years of tests to prove that he knows about the law and the case at hand. Then, he and a million others who also passed the test hear case after case after case. A million different defenses [sic.] are launched against the truth of the claim. Every single of the million jurors after every single of the million cases concluded that there was no reasonable doubt that the claim was true. A single juror, in one case, could say “Not true” and the defendant would go free. But that never happened, and still never happens to this day. Because this defendant gets a million trials every day. And still, not one “Not true” has been found.

That’s the case that evolution is true.

Creationist: Yeah but someday we’ll find a Not true, but for you it’ll probably be too late. Enjoy hell loser.

Me: :-\¹

It comes down to a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of science. I just recently finished my final undergraduate essay ever, On The Nature of Proof for my “History and Philosophy of Mathematics” subject. One section of the essay deals with this issue specifically²

The scientific notion of proof is not dissimilar from that in general use. While scientists (or, perhaps, the media which portrays scientific research to the public) may occasionally be casual in their use of the word “proof”, when questioned about the certainty of their results (and thus, whether their work actually constitutes “proof”), they might reply: “Scientists don’t talk about ‘proof’, period. We leave that to the mathematicians… Change the word ‘proof’ to ‘evidence’, and it makes more sense.”³

Scientists seem to have little problem admitting that they do not, in fact, prove anything. Karl Popper, whose ideas defined the modern scientific method, suggested that “scientific experimentation [is not] carried out with a view to verifying or finally establishing the truth of theories; … we can never finally prove our scientific theories, we can merely (provisionally) confirm or (conclusively) refute them”⁴

It should be clear that any use of the word “proof” in science is either accidental, or a deliberate attempt to promote “pseudo-science” or non-science as legitimate. Scientific theories may be contingently true, but it is not the goal of science to provide “proof”. While science may have higher standards of evidence than the general population, scientists (like the general population) seek “evidence that is sufficient to establish knowledge of a conclusion”⁵, not certain truth.

1. About Atheism: Proving Evolution is True
2. Rosalion, Richard (2007) On The Nature of Proof
3. Myers, P.Z. (2005, June 16) “Volokh’s question“
4. Thornton, Stephen, “Karl Popper“, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2006 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)
5. Chappell, R. (June 17, 2005) “Evidence, Knowledge, and Proof“.

Essentially, in matters for which we are unable to understand and evaluate the facts for ourselves, we try to evaluate the trustworthiness of the source.

Few of us are qualified to assess claims about the merits of string theory, the role in mercury in the etiology of autism, or the existence of repressed memories. So rather than evaluating the asserted claim itself, we instead evaluate the claim’s source. If the source is deemed trustworthy, people will believe the claim, often without really understanding it.¹

It seems only natural, and a perfectly valid way of making up your opinions about things. The problem occurs when we don’t know what sources to trust.

(Scientific claims) clash with intuitive beliefs about the immaterial nature of the soul and the purposeful design of humans and other animals — and, in the United States, these intuitive beliefs are particularly likely to be endorsed and transmitted by trusted religious and political authorities.²

If our own political leaders (Well, thankfully not my political leaders to the same degree – although he did seem a little iffy on global warming for quite a while) show an inherent distrust of science, and people are brought up to believe the church is a reputable source of scientific knowledge, is it any wonder that there’s so much distrust of science?

I’ve read suggestions by scientists that claim that it’s simply not worth arguing with creationists in public forums because those who listen to the creationists already distrust science, and nothing they say (no matter how rational) will convert them. Maybe we need to start earlier? I read a post the other day (dammed³ if I could find it again – help me out if you know what I’m talking about) that suggested the idea of creating a textbook for use in school which rationally outlined the creationist vs. evolution debate in an easy-to-understand yet scientifically accurate way. Maybe if we can help establish that scientists are the ones who should be trusted when it comes to scientific matters⁴, and not politicians or the church.

(Via A Whore in the Temple of Reason)

1. Bloom, Paul & Weisberg, Deena S. (2007) Why Do Some People Resist Science?
2. Bloom, Paul & Weisberg, Deena S. (2007) Why Do Some People Resist Science?
3. Figuratively, of course
4. I can’t believe this actually needs to be said!

I found a podcast recently by The Infidel Guy, where he discusses a group I couldn’t believe actually existed today – The Flat Earth Society.

On this podcast, he discusses the beliefs of the Flat Earth Society who still believe that the earth is actually flat. A round disk, centred at the north pole, with a 150ft ice wall which keeps all the water in. How is it, then, that us “Round Earthers” are utterly convinced that the earth is actually round? Well, it’s a world-wide government conspriacy. One of the most disturbing things about this, is these views are apparently not motivated by religious dogma, but rather… just plain stupidity!

Have a read of their FAQ to fully understand just how nuts these views are. While it appears that the actual number of members who believe what they preach is small, I’m still hoping it’s just a big joke, but even Pastafarianists don’t take things that far.

(I wanted to find a nice picture of Discworld to use on this post, but I couldn’t find one that I could use without breaking copyright)

• Heed the word of God – An amusing commentary about George Bush’s claims that God is speaking to him
• I Believe In Evolution, Except For The Whole Triassic Period – From The Onion: “Scientific reasoning can explain nearly every stage of life from the Big Bang to the present day. I say ‘nearly’ because the period commonly known as the Triassic period was quite obviously the work of the Lord God Almighty.”
• The Atheist Delusion – A satirical response to Richard Dawkins’ “God Delusion”
• The Official God FAQ – Visit this page to find out everything you need to know about God
• God is Imaginary – 50 simple proofs – It is easy to prove to yourself that God is imaginary. The evidence is all around you. Here are 50 simple proofs
• World Religions Religion Statistics Geography Church Statistics – A collection of statistics and religious geography citations
• You Know You’re An Atheist When…
• Ars takes a field trip: the Creation Museum – The new “Creationist Museum” in Kentucky – “This walk through history museum will be a wonderful alternative to the evolutionary natural history museums that are turning countless minds against the gospel of Christ”