More Cool Science and Skeptical Images
Here are some more cool science and non-theist images for your enjoyment!
They make as much sense as the Christian trinity.
It is just as plausible as the Christian version.
Science rocks!
The man who showed the world that science can be exciting and beautiful.
Probably the most influential scientist since Newton. Evolution baby!
His work greatly influence Darwin. He is the forgotten hero of evolution.
Pass the peas please! The theory of inheritance derived by his work with peas laid the groundwork for the science of genetics. I still remember this to this day from high school biology class.
Using Humor to Show Up Delusions
There is a well known example that supporters of science use when refuting the idea of a perfect creator. The example is the laryngeal nerve. This nerve supplies motor function and sensation to the larynx. What is unusual about it is that, even though the larynx is located in the throat in most invertebrates, it follows a path down from the throat, into the chest, and back up to the brain, rather than the shorter and more obvious route of going straight from the throat and up to the brain.
In referring to Richard Dawkins use of the laryngeal nerve argument, Wikipedia states:
“The extreme detour of this nerve (over fifteen feet in giraffes) is cited as evidence of evolution as opposed to intelligent design. The nerve’s route would have been direct in the fish-like ancestors of modern tetrapods, traveling from the brain, past the heart, to the gills (as it does in modern fish). Over the course of evolution, as the neck extended and the heart became lower in the body, the laryngeal nerve was caught on the wrong side of the heart. Natural selection gradually lengthened the nerve by tiny increments to accommodate, resulting in the absurdly circuitous route now observed, which, if designed, could only be described as unintelligent.”[1]
I’ve heard this argument against intelligent design given many times and in different ways, some more effective than others, but as is often the case, humor and satire can serve to drive the point home much better than any physical evidence or well articulated argument can.
Jonathan Rosenberg draws the funny, topical, and skeptical Scenes From A Multiverse. Today’s installment address this particular augment with great hilarity and precision. It is a perfect surgical strike against the idea of a perfect creator, and leaves us with the conclusion that god either does not exist or, if he does, is just plain stupid. The next to the last panel says it all.
1. ^ Dawkins, Richard (2009). “11. History written all over us”. The greatest show on Earth. New York: Free Press. pp. 360–362. ISBN 9781416594789. Retrieved November 21, 2009.
Made With Science!
By http://lithiumboy.deviantart.com/
Look around you. If you are reading this then you are most likely surrounded by things that science make possible. When you read about people who are anti-science and who seek to replace science with their fantasies of religion, think about all the things that make your life easier and richer than you would not have without science. I’m not just talking about iPhones and the Internet, or big screen TVs or even cars. Think about running water; clean running water. Think about electricity. How about the fact that most children in western societies regularly survive to adulthood? All these things can be attributed to science. If the religious right (you can’t call them radical anymore as they now make up the mainstream of the GOP) gets their way and vastly useful and proven scientific theories such as evolution, plate tectonics, and germ theory are suppressed in our educational systems and research funding, it can only bode ill for our modern way of life. If they get their way, you will need to move to Canada, Europe or Asia to have the same quality of life you have now.
So next time you hear someone going on about cutting science funding or trying to get intelligent design (creationism) into science classes in public schools look around and remember that much of what you see was made with science.
The Burden of Proof is on You
Believers often ask me to prove to them that God does not exist. The only evidence that I can offer is that there is no evidence. Now, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, so just by saying that there is no convincing evidence that there isn’t a god doesn’t mean that there isn’t.
The real issue here is that I don’t have to prove anything. The onus is on the believer to prove that their god does exists. Most believers don’t see it this way. I could spend hours, and many a scientist, and atheist has, trying to explain how the scientific method and the rules of logic work to believers, but I’d get nowhere. They usually just don’t get it. It is for this reason that I have refused to try to tackle this issue of proving the non-existence of god, or anything else for that matter.
So, you may ask, why am I addressing this issue now? Because I found a lovely illustration that does one of the best jobs of showing why I don’t have to prove the nonexistence of god, and believers do.
By Shelly Rau at http://beautifullychaotic.deviantart.com/
Nuf said.
A Practical Use For A Science Education – A Job
Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer, has a nice article in where he discusses how data shows that the jobs with the least percentage of unemployed tend to be science based. This means that if you have a science education, any kind of science education, you will likely have an easier time finding a job than those who don’t. He also bemoans the current anti-science platform being pushed by Republican legislatures across the country and nationally because they work against real job creation in the country.
The fact is , science works. It isn’t perfect; it is constantly being revised as we learn more and more about the universe in which we live. In fact, it is this very trait, the falsifiability of scientific theories, that makes is such a powerful tool for understanding and making the most out of the world we live in. It is able to adapt and improve as more data is collected.
Look around you. You are reading this on a computer or smartphone. You cook on stoves that use natural gas or electricity instead of over an open fire. You live in houses that have electricity and running water. In fact, almost everything that you own or use is a product of science. Each law that is passed to push creationism in schools, that strips science funding from colleges and universities, that limits stem cell research, that seeks to deny global warning chips away at the foundation of our economy and national security.
There is a good reason why people call the current religiously motivated, anti-science, Republican party the American Taliban. Like their brethren in Afghanistan, they too seek to take us back to the middle ages where people work from sun up to sunset to scrape together an existence; where children die of starvation and disease in a world surrounded by plenty of food to feed them and medicine to cure them. Yes, this is a bit of hyperbole, but the fact remains that the more science is marginalized and vilified, the more this country loses its place as a leader in the world and becomes a follower, begging scraps from those it once looked down on.
More Atheist Thoughts
Yesterday I posted my suggestion for an atheists crest. Today I have a good quote that I think every atheist should memorize to use whenever someone asks them why they don’t believe in god.
“I contend we are both atheists, I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.” …Stephen F Roberts
Of course, feel free to paraphrase so that it flows naturally for you.
Why I Choose Not To Believe – A Follow Up
I wrote the other day about why I choose not to believe in god. I received an interesting response, which I include here in its entirety:
I’m going to guess that you are probably not quite a hundred years old, so in the geologic scale of time we don’t even appear on the radar. If your brain were a computer hard drive storing information you’ve gleaned for that hundred years period of living, that knowledge base stacked against the unknowns appears pretty skimpy grounds for make absolute pronouncements about what you think exist or not. Google around the web and see if you don’t find that at the invisible scale of sub-atomic quantum particles, literally all the things that Jesus is purported to have done are repeated counted quadrillion, quadrillion times minutely; which is to say what we think of as miracle is actually the fabric of the universe. In order to study it, scientists have to forget about all they have learned and know about our world at the human scale of life.
It is, I think significance to note that the first time that God introduced himself by name to man, he did not even refer to himself as what we might think or even make up stories by our knowledge base to represent; he introduced himself not as the personal “who”, but “what” as in stuff…sentient stuff…stuff that lives. He made man out of the dust so that shouldn’t really be a surprise. “I AM THAT I AM”. That’s about as much as the human flea brain can process about what God really is. He assumed our form so we could relate to him in terms of mortal human dynamics, and we’ve presumed that that’s what he is. We’ve missed all the little clues he left even in his name the Almighty; that’s not just strength to push things around. A better understanding is what Jesus said he is: LIGHT—not just knowledge to enlighten minds but electro-magnetic radiation. He demonstrated both of them in his transfiguration (changing of phase) where he shined in greater strength of candlepower than the sun itself, at the same time proving to be the life of mans spirit, his fundamental core being.
Say my assertions that God is real, and it turns out that he’s not; all that makes me is the local village idiot, and like all else I’ll just go floating about as so much cosmic dust. If your assertions however, that he’s not real proves otherwise that doesn’t just make you a poor gambler, the operative word here would be a fool. Now you could call all this just so much word salad and all, but what’s just another gamble to you.
Comment by newgenesisres | November 4, 2011 | Edit |
Here is my response:
There are three logical fallacies I see here. The first is what I like to call the “quantum theory” fallacy. You take one facet quantum theory, namely Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principal, and apply it as it should not, and does, not apply. Just because anything many be possible given the uncertainty of quantum mechanics, doesn’t, by default, mean that it has to have happened. Also, these random things that you suppose gave Jesus his miraculous powers, are just that, random and also, uncontrollable. They just happen on their own.
Next, you make a false assumption; that the Bible is an authoritative work. There is nothing to support the devine nature of the Bible. If anything, biblical scholarship over the past hundren years or so show that the Bible is a book written by many authors over the course of hundreds, if not thousands, of years. It had many sources and has many contradictions.
Finally, your conclusion is an example of Pascal’s Wager, which basically sates that even if the evidence doesn’t support the existence of god, you should believe in him just in case he does. I don’t buy it and refuse to take it. It is no different than saying that I should believe in Santa Clause or the Tooth Fairy, even though their is no evidence that they do exist (and reason is against it, even though you can come up with dozens of arguments for it), just incase they do so that I don’t miss out on the presents or the quarters that I might gain if I did believe.
There is one other logical fallacy that I see here; Special Pleading. You try to assert that your case for your belief in god, is somehow special and should have a special status due to the reasons you suggest. Your hypothesis is not supported by any evidence that can reasonably be tested or falsified. If you want to get a better idea of what it takes to show that a hypothesis warrants being considered a valid theory that reliably explains the universe in which we live, see my post about astrology and the scientific method.
This is a good example of the special pleading and other logical fallacies that believers in all superstitious ideas use to try to buttress their beliefs. The fact is that their arguments, as given, are unfalsifiable, and any hypothesis which is unfalsifiable does not have be considered at all.
An Excellent Example of Science vrs Pseudoscience
The website atheism.about.com has a really good article examining if astrology is pseudoscience or science. While I agree that astrology is bullshit, that is not what, I think, is the real take away point from the article. You could easily subsitute any number of questionable practices such as “psychic powers” or “homeopathy” for astrology.
The real importance of the article is how well it explains the scientific method. The reason this is important is that so many people have no concept of what the scientific method is and how it works. This leads to a gross misunderstanding and mistrust of science. This is bad because it leads to the undermining of scientific advancement in our society, a society that, more and more, is very dependent on the technology that science gives us.
There is a sad and firghtening trend in this country of mistrust, and even hostility, toward science. This kind of anti-science belief used to be confined to the radical right or left wing movements. The religious right fights against science when it contradicts the Bible (which is does the vast majority of the time). The radical left distrusts it because it is not “natural”, and they fear the possible misuses of science. Now, however, anti-science beliefs and rhetoric have become the norm. We see this in the current election cycle where Republican candidates are falling all over themselves to see who can be more anti-science than the rest.
It used to be that the GOP trumpeted the benefits of science as a way to make our society stronger, better, and safer. Does anyone remember the “Star Wars” program of the Reagan era? How about the Space Race? In this country, the military has always been a major driving force in advancing science and technology. It will be interesting to see how the military responds to the ever growing hostility of the GOP to science, considering that most of the military leadership has tended to be republican, as evidinced by the many generals who have gone into politics after retiring from their military careers.
This country used to be a leader in science and technology and that is what made it a great economic and military power. If this anti-science trend continues, we can only sit back and watch as our scientific technological leadership slips away and our economy because a totally consumer driven one, dependent on the technology of other countries who put science above superstition.
I Chose Not To Believe
I think that the one of the most compelling reasons that I have chosen not be believe in any supernatural god(s) can best be summed up by the picture below. Look at it. Think really hard about it. If you do you will begin to understand what lead me to shed my supersitious beliefs.
By hull612 (Otherwise known as Jon)
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