I really don’t see any reason to post this today, since the world is obviously going to be ending within a couple hours of the posting.
Not sure what I’m talking about? Check out the LHC Countdown, if you can. The last couple of times I’ve tried to check it I couldn’t get on because the site’s bandwidth was exceeded, so apparently there are a lot of people sitting there watching the slow yet inevitable countdown to doom.
So what can we expect to see from doom-seekers as the days pass by and the world doesn’t explode? Well I, for one, expect to see a shift in claims. When the thing gets turned on all those fear mongering nuts who were convinced that 8/8/2008 would be the end of Earth will start saying
“No, it’s going to take a couple months for them to accelerate a particle up to high enough speeds.”
And once we pass that barrier it will be
“But there’s only a 0.04% chance the particles will hit in the right way.”
And once it’s been online and crashing particles long enough to convince even the most hardcore apocalypse junkies that the LHC will not be their demise, that’s when we’ll start hearing about how
“It’s a government conspiracy! We’re all really dead and the government has planted our souls in machines on Mars to convince us otherwise!”
But that’s just my guess. Who knows, maybe people will actually admit that they were just being dumb.
Haha, I crack myself up.
Luckily, in the event we end up going the way of Alderaan, none of you will be around to say “I told you so,” so it’s a win-win for me.
Today I’d like to present you with the first (and perhaps only) strip of The Good Word. The Good Word is a comic I whipped up to illustrate a point I see happening all too often, the Trump card of “Yeah well you’re going to hell” whenever you stump a creationist/fundie. But I’m getting ahead of myself… (click for the full sized image).
1 Peter 3:15 actually reads:
But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect,
It doesn’t actually demand you have an answer ready for the questions presented in the comic, just for “the hope you have”. I thought it would be safe to use anyway, because I see and hear a lot of Christians preach the verse as it is presented in the comic.
As for the three questions presented, I’ve heard a couple answers for them that I’ll go over to give you all an example of the standards set by Christian apologists. The first one questions how Judas died. According to the book of Matthew he hanged himself, but according to Acts he fell head first and split himself open spilling his guts out. Now let me pull a quote from the Christian Apologetics & Research Ministry:
There is no contradiction here at all because both are true. A contradiction occurs when one statement excludes the possibility of another. In fact, what happened here is that Judas went and hung himself and then his body later fell down and split open. In other words, the rope or branch of the tree probably broke due to the weight and his body fell down and his bowels spilled out.
And if you believe that then I have a boat full of non-contradicting holy books to sell you. Besides, even if the rope did break he’d fall on his feet, not on his head.
The second point asks about Jesus’ last words. While Matthew and Mark both say that he “Cried out and breathed his last”, in Luke and John we find contradicting verses:
Luke 23:46
Jesus called out with a loud voice, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” When he had said this, he breathed his last.
John 19:30
When he had recieved the drink, Jesus said, “It is finished.” With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.
CARM also has an order they put these verses in so that he says both of them before he dies, but I couldn’t find an explanation as to how they chose the ordering. It seems to be a bunch of BS trying to explain away an obvious contradiction.
The last question refers to different genealogies of Joseph, Jesus’ step father. Similar to the others above, in two books we have completely different lineages extending from Abraham through King David and to Joseph, in an attempt to fulfill the prophecy that Jesus was the heir of King David. This is a silly way to complete that prophecy anyway, since Jesus and Joseph share no blood, so even if Joseph was King David himself it wouldn’t mean Jesus would be his heir. Here’s a look at the verses in question.
Matthew 1:15-16
Eliud the father of Eleazar,
Eleazar the father of Matthan,
Matthan the father of Jacob,
and Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.
Luke 3:23-24
Now Jesus himself was about thirty years old when he began his ministry. He was the son, so it was thought, of Joseph,
the son of Heli, the son of Matthat,
the son of Levi, the son of Melki,
the son of Jannai, the son of Joseph,
Again, this seems like an obvious contradiction. Apologist arguments try to say that the verses in Luke are actually the lineage of Mary, but that’s obviously not what the author was trying to present.
The underlying problem here is not the inconsistencies or the contradictions, it’s the method of thought that’s required to hold the Bible as the inerrant word of God. In order to make up such ridiculous explanations for these contradictions you have to already have the mindset that everything in the Bible is true, and that no facts or problems will convince you otherwise. In other words, it requires a completely closed mind. Where the scientific method would have you analyze data and see what we could resolve from that, religion starts off with what they think is the resolution and works backwards to try to find facts that fit in with their beliefs.
Anyway, I kinda enjoyed making the comic, so I may try a couple more and see how it goes. If any of you graphic design goons want to give me color/drawing tips go for it, I’m all ears.
I like to refer to myself as a Skeptic. I think the term “atheist” is too specific, because I don’t limit my disbelief to just gods, but I approach everything from a critical perspective. Well…to an extent. I follow the axiom that extreme claims require extreme evidence. If you tell me you had a salad for lunch, I’m not going to call you a liar until you provide me with proof because there’s nothing extraordinary about your claim. Unless you’re a fatty. Fatties don’t eat salad. They eat Cheetos.
Fatties aside, this philosophy applies to pretty much everything in my life, from religion (as you can tell), to science. I’m just as skeptical of extraordinary claims made “in the name of science” as I am to ones claiming to be miracles of the devine. That’s where this video comes in:
For those of you with a too short of an attention span to watch a 10 minute video, the premise is that the Earth has been greatly increasing in size, and that its rate of expansion is accelerating. It claims that the theory of plate tectonics is wrong, and that the reason that all the continents seem to fit together is not because of a pangean origin, but because a few hundred million years ago all of the continents took up the entire Earth.
It makes a very extreme claim, and makes an attempt to back it up with evidence. But what happens when we really look into it? It falls apart, just as a critical mind would expect it to. My analysis of this video is going to come in two parts. The first part (this one) is going to focus on looking at the logical fallacies presented in the argument. The second argument will look more into the evidence for and against the hypothesis.
There are a few clues that you start looking for when you are debunking pseudoscience. The first is shown very prominently in this quote from the video:
There is a kind of conspiracy of science among certain scientists. They know but are not telling you that the upper tectonic plates of earth also join in the pacific, not partially, they join totally. You are asked to believe that the continents swim or drift about willy-nilly, bumping and crashing as if they were on a greased skillet. This is not true. The simple truth is apparently too upsetting to too many apple carts?
It’s all too typical to see people with these absurd claims hiding behind conspiracy theory. If you think about it, it’s a pretty solid defense mechanism if your target audience is stupid. As soon as somebody opposes your idea you can just say they’re part of the conspiracy and BAM, they’re the bad guy and you’re the victim. Claims that scientists know something that they don’t want the general public to know, and yet the speaker knows, is simply appealing to our desire to know what the secret is. If you walk up to anyone and tell them you have a secret suddenly it’s the only thing that person can think about, and when it’s some big powerful group of scientists keeping the secret it’s all the more appealing.
The simple truth that shatters this quote is that scientists love upsetting the apple cart! It’s the people who do that who win the Nobel prizes! Look at Copernicus. He made the claim for a heliocentric solar system and it turned the common belief upside-down, and he went down in history for it. It’s absurd to think that scientists would be afraid to present this knowledge because this would be the breakthrough of a lifetime! I see similar claims all the time in the Intelligent Design movement; people just love to claim that scientists know life was designed by an intelligent being but are afraid to say anything. Purveyor of bad science, I scoff at thee!
The Atlantic spread is so obvious that a child would recognize it.
This one is a variant of “even an idiot could see X”. Of course the non-critical mind will immediately think “well I don’t want to be an idiot! I believe!” Even beyond that it’s just wrong. If you showed a child a map of the Atlantic sea floor do you really think he or she would start talking about the Atlantic spread? I think not.
I’m not making this up. This map comes from the scientific community.
This is a vague twist on the age old argument from authority, meaning using “an authority figure said it, so it has to be right!” as evidence for your claim. I see this one used a lot by the people who believe that autism is linked to child vaccinations (the evidence says otherwise, but it’s probably all a big conspiracy anyway). They will quote Jenny McCarthy, who is an avid spokesperson about the issue, but doesn’t have the scientific or medical background to be an authority figure here. In this case the map used is valid, but the way it’s used as an argument makes it sound more like they’re referring to the same “scientific community” referenced by the herbal supplement sellers in my spam folder.
Why does the scientific community desperately cling to and promote the idea that the ocean bottom is sliding under the continents and into a magma which is twice as dense as solid granite, a totally unsupportable and scientifically unsound idea? They Have to. Or else they’d have to observe and admit that the earth is growing. And that, viewers, is a very big deal. That would change everything in science, from the smallest particle to the whole universe. One hundred years of scientific theory out the window.
This is another example of the first one I mentioned. I really don’t see how people think big discoveries are a bad thing for the scientific community. It boggles the mind. This one also makes the claim that the theory of plate tectonics is “a totally unsupportable and scientifically unsound idea” but never bothers to say why. In order for something to be a scientific theory it has to be supportable and scientific. Did the authors just not even bother to look up the Wikipedia page on plate tectonics?
It also tries very hard to make the idea sound even bigger than it is. Even if the Earth is growing, that doesn’t change chemistry, biology, anthropology, psychology, and most other forms of science. It would have some big implications for physics and geology, but that’s about it. And where’s the evidence saying that it would “change everything” even just in physics and geology? Maybe it would just be new data, but would actually fit in quite well with what we know about physics and geology. I’m not saying it would, I’m just pointing out the logical fallacy that the conclusion doesn’t follow from the premise.
Tectonic spreading, even according to the most conservative scientists, has created 2/3 of the earth’s surface in the last 200 million years. And therefor, the same, the same must be true for all planets, including Mars. Must!
Perhaps this is just an accidental misuse of the word “therefor”, but otherwise this is a blatant non-sequitur (from the SGU: Non-Sequitur In Latin this term translates to “doesn’t follow”. This refers to an argument in which the conclusion does not necessarily follow from the premises. In other words, a logical connection is implied where none exists.). I mean seriously, their claim is that if it happens on Earth it must happen on ALL planets. I would brush this off as a simple mistake, but given how much they emphasize it through repetition, I know they actually believe it.
Ok, one more and then it’s time to wrap up Part I. There’s still a bunch to choose from, but I think this one is the best:
Or…you can continue to ignore the facts and say, as the ancients said, that the Earth is unique and singular in the universe, and that we are the center, and the universe rotates around the Earth.
What they’re basically saying is that if you don’t believe in their theory, then you believe in a geocentric universe. This one spans so many logical fallacies I just cannot fathom how it ever made it to the theory. Let’s count them, shall we? Again, these definitions are taken from the SGU link above.
Ad hominem An ad hominem argument is any that attempts to counter anothers claims or conclusions by attacking the person, rather than addressing the argument itself. True believers will often commit this fallacy by countering the arguments of skeptics by stating that skeptics are closed minded. Skeptics, on the other hand, may fall into the trap of dismissing the claims of UFO believers, for example, by stating that people who believe in UFO’s are crazy or stupid.
False Dichotomy Arbitrarily reducing a set of many possibilities to only two. For example, evolution is not possible, therefore we must have been created (assumes these are the only two possibilities). This fallacy can also be used to oversimplify a continuum of variation to two black and white choices. For example, science and pseudoscience are not two discrete entities, but rather the methods and claims of all those who attempt to explain reality fall along a continuum from one extreme to the other.
Reductio ad absurdum In formal logic, the reductio ad absurdum is a legitimate argument. It follows the form that if the premises are assumed to be true it necessarily leads to an absurd (false) conclusion and therefore one or more premises must be false. The term is now often used to refer to the abuse of this style of argument, by stretching the logic in order to force an absurd conclusion. For example a UFO enthusiast once argued that if I am skeptical about the existence of alien visitors, I must also be skeptical of the existence of the Great Wall of China, since I have not personally seen either. This is a false reductio ad absurdum because he is ignoring evidence other than personal eyewitness evidence, and also logical inference. In short, being skeptical of UFO’s does not require rejecting the existence of the Great Wall.
Tu quoque Literally, you too. This is an attempt to justify wrong action because someone else also does it. “My evidence may be invalid, but so is yours.”
Well, that’s all the time we have for today. When I delve back into this for Part II I’ll look at the actual evidence for and against an expanding planet. While we can pick apart someone’s claims for logical fallacies pretty easily, knowing that their argument is flawed doesn’t mean that their conclusion is false. It would be enough ground to dismiss the argument until they came up with a better one in most cases, but I’d like to spend a little more time on this so I’ll keep digging anyway. As it turns out, this expanding world idea is one that has been around for decades, so it has accumulated a lot of arguments for and against it.
So what have we learned today? Hopefully I’ve helped to make you all a little more skeptical when it comes to claims of the extreme, but I would be quite happy if you all came away just knowing this: just because some guy made a YouTube video of it doesn’t make it true.
Abbr. Enth.
