Category: readers’ beefs

Readers’ beefs

April 9, 2016 • 9:45 am

Or perhaps I should call them “Readers’ porks,” as they’re all anti-Semitic this week.

First, two comments on my satire “Gentiles must cease their relentless cultural appropriation of bagels“. Needless to say, these didn’t make it to airtime.

From reader Jakob Aubill (who used that name):

Now I’ve seen it all. I’m not surprised that this level of idiocy comes from the Jewish sector of the Internet.

Poor Jakob’s only unable to read, but an anti-Semite to boot. You can look up Jakob Aubill on Google, but of course it may be a different one, or someone appropriating his name.

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From reader “fgfghhh,” too cowardly to use his/her name:

Jews are not real humans. Simply vermin

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And here’s a comment from reader “Phalluster” on yesterday’s post, “Pope again pretends to be progressive, but it’s only lip service”:

I guess you heebs are gonna have to make a ‘Vatican 3’ so you can impose more of your perversions on the goyim. If you believe any of your own religious tomes, you’d worry that God will eventually tear his mighty fist up through the earth’s crust and pull you all down into the magma. It will be the world’s loudest “oy vey!”

Just a reminder to those who think that anti-Semitism is a dead issue. Do these comments bother me? Not at all. It’s possible they are ironic (see next post), but somehow I don’t think so. There are such people in the world, and it’s not worth worrying about them—until they try to turn their bigotry into political action.

Readers’ beefs

March 16, 2016 • 2:30 pm

The creationists have been making their egress from the woodwork over the last few weeks. Here are four of their comments that didn’t make prime time.

From reader William, commenting on my post BioLogos tells “The Big Story”, becomes less scientific and more evangelical“:

God did not use evolution for exactly the reasons you have pointed out, Jerry Coyne. Also, because that type of evolutionary biology – crossing over into different created ‘kinds’ – doesn’t occur in the natural world; there is no evidence for it anyway. He created everything ex nihilo, just like the Bible says. The Genesis account is a record which is in agreement with observed science.

There’s no hope for this person.

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Reader James Bryonson, commenting on, oddly, yesterday’s photo of me with my voting receipt:

Evolution is just a theory to try to prove a point with the nerds that hate god.

“Nerds that hate god.” Those nerds must include Francis Collins and Ken Miller, and the 40% or so of scientists who believe in gods.

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Reader “groovyman 67” had this to say about my post “What are the fundamentals of evolutionary biology?“, which featured a description of the origin of mitochondria and chloroplasts by ingestion of bacteria by other organisms:

Is this science or science-fiction? Really? 2 made-up of one creature eating another and co-opting it’s genes provides the entire foundation of Darwinism (even ignoring the origins question). This idea will be long gone in 20 year, if not 10 or 5, but no matter today is passes as wisdom rather than an entertaining Dr. Suess book. Of course I’m just a regular dude so I can’t comprehend that common sense is disallowed by geniuses.

I’ll ignore the “it’s genes” and misspelling of Dr. Seuss (why can’t creationists spell?), and add that there are tons of evidence that the “ingestion” origins of these organelles is supported by very strong evidence. Besides, they are hardly “the entire foundation of Darwinism.” Groovyman 67 is simply an ignorant evolution denialist who touts his “regular dudeness” as evidence of intellectual superiority.

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And reader “bill” on my post, “Social media excoriates British teacher for claiming there’s more evidence for the truth of the Bible than of evolution“:

I stand on the Bible account and am sure at some point you will wish you had also.

When, exactly, will I stand on the Bible account? When I’m about to die? Don’t count on it.

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On the non-creationist side, we have reader “idpnsd” commenting on my post, “Another misguided believer claims that science is based on faith“. Always be wary of a comment that starts with “Ayn Rand” said:

Ayn Rand said – “Truth is not for all men, but only for those who seek it.” Or in other words – there is no truth in the mainstream, but truth is out there, on the internet, and a truth seeker will recognize it.

All of science is completely wrong and all of religion is completely correct. There are many ways to prove it. But since space is limited, please refer to the free book on Soul Theory at the blog site https://theoryofsouls.wordpress.com/

But I give some examples. Take Newton’s first law, which says – an object will continue in motion in a straight line with a constant velocity. But we have never seen such an object, neither on earth nor in space. Thus Newton is wrong. Look at the book for many such examples including QM and SR.

You have said – “but I wouldn’t bet $5 that Jesus was resurrected bodily.” – You do not know that this is correct. Even you can do that also, if you acquire yogic power via yogic meditation. There are many such examples even in modern times. Take a look at the yogic power chapter in the above book.

There was a time when Vedas were known all over the world. You can find its influences in Bible, Judaism, Hinduism etc. Vedas define all the laws of nature like – soul theory, yogic power, reincarnation, destiny, eternal recurrence, birth-maturity-death etc. All of these laws are there in Bible in some form. There is no God in Vedas. [Yogic power in the Bible?]

“You have faith (i.e., confidence) that the sun will rise tomorrow because it always has, and there’s no evidence that the Earth has stopped rotating or the sun has burnt out.” – you know it is wrong. Sun will burn out one day. Vedas say – all objects go through, birth-maturity- death process. Scientist have confirmed that by observing the nature.

“It’s what produced antibiotics, computers, and our ability to sequence DNA.” – Not correct. These are examples of engineering. There is heaven and hell difference between science and engineering. See the book.

I don’t want to waste my time refuting all the nonsense packed in this comment. And what good would it do anyway; the person is beyond redemption.

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Finally, from reader “tiffany 267,” we have the Flounce of the Year, as she was apparently convinced she caught me contradicting myself. This was intended as a comment on my post, “Apple vs. U.S. government: a big dilemma“:

I no longer know why I’m following this blog. You claim it is impossible to objectively know right from wrong, and yet ironically you make a moral statement in the same essay “My own feeling is that Apple should comply with the government’s request” which is so evil I cannot fathom the thought processes that could facilitate such a vile statement.

My next step is to unfollow you. So long.

I hope the door didn’t hit her on the way out! Clearly “tiffany 267” doesn’t know the difference between “objective moral statements” and making a judgment call about what would be the best thing to do. As for the “evil” of Apple’s compliance, well, that’s just dramatic hyperbole.

I suspect we won’t miss her contributions to our discourse.

Reader’s beef of the month

February 22, 2016 • 10:00 am

Last year, John Brockman, my literary agent as well as the agent for many other popular-science writers, put together his annual book of answers to one Edge question. The 2015 book was This Idea Must Die: Scientific Theories That Are Blocking Progress. My short contribution was “Free Will”, and since everyone knows why I think that notion should quietly lie down and expire, I won’t go into it. Rather, I wanted to show how it prompted an irate email from someone whose name I have expunged out of mercy:

Dear Sir:

I’ve read what you wrote in This Idea Must Die.

Maybe you should look at Taylor Branch’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book on the civil rights movement, “At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-1968.” King publicly asked America’s clergymen to come to Selma to help him, and hundreds of them poured in. He would have accepted science professors too, of course, He needed all the help he could get. But no science professors showed up. They didn’t care. There was a contest here to see who cares about morality, religion or science, and religion won in a landslide.
Branch is a personal friend of Bill Clinton. I doubt that he is biased in favor of religion.
In the 1980s, the same story. Lots of clergymen condemned Reagan’s mass murder in Central America, but when did the Nobel Prize winning scientists sign a petition condemning it? Never. They didn’t care. If they had done that, maybe the American people would’ve woken up a little bit, but they didn’t care. Sagan could’ve written a book called “Reagan Is Committing Mass Murder” but he never bothered. Instead he wrote about comets and “Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors,” a completely worthless book.
Read any biography of Richard Feynman. You will see he never showed the slightest interest in politics, or in improving the world. He lived for pleasure.
Sincerely,
[Name redacted to protect the clueless]
As far as I can determine, this letter has nothing to do with free will. Rather, it’s an indictment of scientists for being unconcerned with social progress. The problem is that it compares scientists with clergymen, but what about every other profession? Just counting academics, what about economists, art historians, or medical school professors? For that matter, what about plumbers, dentists, engineers, merchants, or baseball players? Clearly the clergy would be overrepresented in matters like the civil rights movement, for Dr. King was one of them. But the workers for racial equality weren’t all clergymen: what about the thousands of students who marched for civil rights—some of them dying? I was one of them (no, I didn’t die!), and I have the lapel buttons to prove it.
As for Feynman, well, he wasn’t totally silent on matters of social import. He cared deeply about education, wrote textbooks, and we shouldn’t forget his presence on the Challenger panel—he zeroed in on the O-rings (as had the engineers who were overruled) as the cause of the disaster.
As for scientists not interested in improving the world, the writer is simply an idiot about that. Many scientists go into their professions to improve the world, or to understand it in ways that could lead to a better world. I’m not saying that all of us are deeply invested in improving society, but I’ll also claim that, as a group, scientists have done a tremendous amount for humanity, and I’m counting here the material and physical well being of humanity, not the bonus of giving us an inspiring understanding of nature.

I get email: a believer tells me science is no better than faith

January 31, 2016 • 11:00 am

Since I publicly criticize religion and tout science, I’m subject to all manner of rebukes from believers. I don’t often post these, but they’re often of the “science is just like faith” ilk. Here’s one that just arrived (I’ve left the person’s name out, but feel free to respond as if you were addressing him/her):

Dear Dr. Coyne,

I happened to incidentally come across reference to your book “Faith vs Fact: why science and religion are incompatible”. I have seen this kind of argument go around for a number of decades. While many may feel this way, I for one do not. I have my religious faith and I do not have any incompatibility with my science (I have made fairly substantial contributions to the science of evolution over the years for example). I was interested to see the assertion on the website (http://jerrycoyne.uchicago.edu/Faith-vs-Fact.html) that “religion — including faith, dogma, and revelation — leads to incorrect, untestable, or conflicting conclusions.” Hmm, interesting. I could have said exactly the same about some endeavors on the behalf of current evolutionary theory too. I have found over the decades that the practice of science often has the same shortcomings that are attributed to religion, including bigotry and suppression. In the science of evolution I have seen how the practice of science can often fall short of “reason and empirical study”. None of this will make any difference to you I am sure, as we are both well on the way in our respective paths of exploration and it is good that there is diversity of opinion on these matters.
Sincerely,
[Name redacted]
As happens so often, when someone says that science is pretty much like religious faith, they inadvertently criticize faith, as when this person notes that “over the decades that the practice of science often has the same shortcomings that are attributed to religion, including bigotry and suppression.” That’s hardly to religion’s credit.

Now in Faith versus Fact, I debunk the notion that science itself produces bigotry and suppression. Insofar as those practices occur among scientists, I argue, it comes from the people themselves—not the discipline—acting badly. So why can’t we likewise claim that when religion produces bigotry and suppression, it’s also the result of bad people practicing a value-neutral faith?

The response is that inherent in some religions—but not in science—are three features that can enhance bad behavior: the connection of faith with a moral code, the notion that you (but not adherents to other faiths) have absolute truths—and not the provisional truths of science—and the ideas of eternal reward and punishment. Those three features can promote divisiveness, bigotry, and missionizing: the desire to impose your beliefs on others for their own good (viz., Republican theocracy in America). Missionizing may be done with good intentions, but of course it’s annoying and ultimately dysfunctional, not to mention the fact that it warps, lies to, and brainwashes children, inhibiting them from asking questions.

But that aside, what bothers me was the claim by this person—and he/she is a scientist—that science falls down at least as much as religion in ascertaining what is true, or so I inferred from this bit:

“religion — including faith, dogma, and revelation — leads to incorrect, untestable, or conflicting conclusions.” Hmm, interesting. I could have said exactly the same about some endeavors on the behalf of current evolutionary theory too. I have found over the decades that the practice of science often has the same shortcomings that are attributed to religion.
The fact is, however, that the practice of science often leads to correct, testable, and uncontested conclusions, while religion does not. Here are some facts uncovered by evolutionary biology that religion can’t match:
  • Life on earth began somewhere between 3.8 and 3.5 billion years ago.
  • Mammals evolved gradually from reptiles
  • The closest living species to humans are the two species of chimpanzees
  • The legs of tetrapods evolved from bony fins of fishes
  • Whales evolved from land mammals (artiodactyls) beginning about 50 million years ago, and the rear limbs gradually disappeared.
  • All living species have a single common ancestor, so that there was only one origin of “life” that produced the species living now

I could go on and on—my book WEIT is full of such things. And if you expand the realm into “truths” uncovered by science, the realm of such things is unlimited. A benzene molecule has six carbon atoms, the Universe is about 13.8 billion years old, light travels at a constant speed in a vacuum, and so on.

Yes, of course scientists have been wrong: think of things like static continents, cold fusion, and the notion that the hereditary molecule was a protein (or, as Linus Pauling thought, a DNA triple helix). But, unlike religion, science gets a lot of things right. If it didn’t, we’d still be living in the Middle Ages, disease-ridden creatures without technology. So I challenged the person who wrote me a letter to send me a list of ten things about the cosmos that religious intuition got right.  How many gods are there? Was Jesus the divine son of God? How does God want us to treat unbelievers and apostates? Is it immoral to get blood transfusions? Does god want women to be priests? Religions disagree on fundamental questions like this, and they’ll never resolve them. Religion makes no progress in understanding the universe, despite the fact that an important function of religion is to discern truth. What good would Christian belief be if Jesus wasn’t the son of God who was crucified and resurrected.

Although liberal religionists claim that “my religion isn’t about truth,” that’s generally a lie. For if you don’t accept the epistemic claims of your faith: that there is a god, Jesus was divine, Muhammad was a prophet to whom the Qur’an was dictated, and so on, what reason have you to practice the rituals and ethics of your faith?

I could go on, but this misguided person doesn’t deserve more of my time. Respond below if you wish. I just have one more statement, regarding this person’s claim:

it is good that there is diversity of opinion on these matters.

My answer is “no there isn’t.” There’s no more value in diversity of opinion about this than there is in claims about the shape of the earth or the presence of alien abductions. Show me evidence for a god and then we’ll talk.

Weekly readers’ beefs

January 10, 2016 • 11:00 am

Ah, opprobrium has been mercifully scarce lately, although it makes this post a lot less interesting. In fact, there’s been only one thing to show over the past couple of weeks (beyond those comments that have gone straight to spam): an attempted but futile comment by reader “Janye Best” on my post about the acceleration and power of the chameleon’s tongue (spelling is reproduced without correction):

Dude you know so little about biologly in an applicable relevant sense, as opposed to reading this blog for any information I usually ask my 14 year old what’s in her earth science book. Please blog about things that can actually contribute to the advancement of biology. Oh and please, you’re an atheist. Talk about that.

Well, I don’t write about “earth science”; my speciality is evolutionary biologly. And, looking at the chameleon-tongue post, I’m simply unable to find what exercised this reader. Perhaps he (I’m assuming here a male) was simply hyped up from overconsumption of Doritos and Mountain Dew in his parents’ basement.

Readers’ beefs

December 26, 2015 • 12:00 pm

The usual rivulet of wonky readers’ comments, ones that I save for posting above the fold, has slowed lately. Perhaps even the addled take a break over the holidays. But there are still four that I’ll show below, even though the people trying to post them will never post here again.

Reader “John”, apparently incensed by my post on the special issue of Evolutionary Applications devoted to women in evolutionary biology, let loose with a fusillade against American women:

I am an American man, and I have decided to boycott American women. In a nutshell, American women are the most likely to cheat on you, to divorce you, to get fat, to steal half of your money in the divorce courts, don’t know how to cook or clean, don’t want to have children, etc. Therefore, what intelligent man would want to get involved with American women?

American women are generally immature, selfish, extremely arrogant and self-centered, mentally unstable, irresponsible, and highly unchaste. The behavior of most American women is utterly disgusting, to say the least.

This blog is my attempt to explain why I feel American women are inferior to foreign women (non-American women), and why American men should boycott American women, and date/marry only foreign (non-American) women.

[JAC: Website URL for this blog redacted so the guy doesn’t get any traffic]

BOYCOTT AMERICAN WOMEN!

I’d suggest that he get an inflatable doll, but those don’t cook or clean.

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A person named “gunads” (LOL) tried to put this comment on a photo of an ammo-and-pro-gun ad attached to my post “Our gun culture” . (People often post comments on picture pages rather than on the posts themselves; be careful where you comment!). At any rate, “gunads” seems to be trying to sway me toward a pro-gun view by claiming that ownership of guns is simply a result of evolution:

It’s a beautiful gun ad. Let’s think about it, you believe in evolution? Well, guns are an evolution over fists, sticks, swords, bows and arrows. Guns are the great equalizer, instead of having to be young and fit, and 89-year-old-woman in a wheelchair with a gun will be equal to a 21-year-old punk in his prime.

We the humans aren’t dirty apes that have done the same thing over centuries. We are not slaves of nature, we overcome nature everyday. When nature says, “it’s gonna rain,” we open an umbrella. When nature sends a hurricane, we hide under our hurricane-proof glass and/or shutters. When nature give us deadly diseases, we invent cures. And when face danger from burglars, rapists, and murderers, we get our guns and survive like civilized men instead of dying like dirty dogs.

Yeah, and an 89-year-old woman in a wheelchair who has a rocket-propelled grenade is equal to a tank, and if she had a nuclear weapon, she’d be equal to a whole country!

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Reader “Dom Neuser,” upset by my post on “The sad news: American’s beliefs about Christmas,” took the trouble to tell us what he thinks about evolution:

unless you can create life or unless you know of someone who can do that, you have nothing to say. This website is like a little club of like minded individuals who spend all day patting each other on the back reminding each other how smart they are.

Well, we’re savvy enough not to believe in a Big Bodiless Mind in the Sky! But seriously, would Dom be able to tell us exactly what his god is like and how he knows that? Further, my experience is that the commenters, while generally liberal and godless, are far from being like-minded. Has he read any pieces on free will? Maybe Dom should go over to one of the Intelligent Design websites and see how like minded they are!

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This is my favorite comment (responding to the same post above) for two reasons. First, it’s by someone who used the pseudonym “Jesus dided for you.” Second, it’s in CAPSLOCK:

YOU SIR, ARE A MORON.

Sadly, in his comment Mr. Jesus Dided forgot the comma after “YOU.”

Readers’ beefs

November 7, 2015 • 1:30 pm

For some reason, over the past few months there have been fewer attempts to post by the angry faithful, creationists, and sundry other rude or misguided people. I’m glad, for in the past some of those comments were a bit distressing to me—even though my skin has grown palpably thicker over my past 5.5 years on this site.

Ergo, today I have but two readers with serious beefs, readers who won’t be seen here again. First, reader “feelsbe4reals” (what a name!) wanted to put up this comment on my post “Black Caturday: Hili dialogue”. And what a place to put this comment!:

the following are required for a meaningful life:

(1) Eternal life
(2) Absolute infinite qualitative goodness

In this life, we have neither eternal life nor absolute infinite qualitative goodness. This is why laymen correctly identity the existence of God as something necessary for life to have meaning, because God is absolute infinite qualitative goodness.

In order for a meaningful system of morality, the following are required:

(1) Free will
(2) Infinite value of moral agents

No matter how good an atheist is, he can never guarantee the existence of (2), because this requires the existence of God. Immanuel Kant is the one who closest came to a totally descriptive but absolute system of morality, but it fell short of the morality of Jesus Christ because he had no way to guarantee the infinite moral worth of human beings.

Oh, the certainty of this person’s judgment! And how sad for the rest of us to finally see that our lives are meaningless. I wonder what the difference is between “absolute infinite qualitative goodness” and “absolute infinite quantitative goodness”? After all, infinite is infinite, and can you really measure anything that is “qualitative”?

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Wannabee reader Daniel Knight, who included a link to his own website, Knight’s Christian Commentaries And Worldwide News, tried to make two comments on my post about Lawrence Krauss’s New Yorker piece, “Krauss on entanglement“:

Comment #1:

Stop perpetuating myths you moron. Like with “The dark side of Buddhism” moron atheist mainstream science cultists are always siding with and flirting with Buddhism, not Christians and yet you pretend it’s anti evolution/atheism? Even the Dalai Lama moron claims Christianity is not a religion and you’re pretending it’s antiatheism? Stupid idiot you are more proof atheism is moronic. There is no evidence for “NO GOD” stupid, living fossils cancel out any possibility of evolution and there are so many of them it’s obvious they aren’t millions or billions of years old and ooparts are extremely strong evidence against evolution and on and on and on. You are a backwards delusion idiot. As you morons say: ignorance is bliss (but really it’s not, because it gets you humiliation and leads to Hell), although it’s a vague statement so in some cases it’s good not to know certain things like all the stupid information cluttering the minds of so many morons like yourself.

I’d say this would be a troll except his website is for real. In the above I count six uses of “moron” or “moronic”, with a couple of “idiot”s thrown in for good measure. The funny bit is that on his own site, referring to his commenting policy on the “about me” page, Knight says this:

Further: when you start a sentence off with an insult, or type long rants or make repeated posts using a fake name and especially email: I consider that harassment, just like you hypocritical morons would if that were done to you.

So isn’t this harassment? At least he didn’t use a fake name (I think).

But that wasn’t enough for Knight. Here’s his comment #2:

Oh and on entanglement, how can you even dare to bring this up since it refutes Einstein’s Big Bang (Big Flop) nonsense? Losers., you perpetuate new age science and try and sound informed by mentioning opposing contradictory views. Doesn’t work on me.

Of course, I couldn’t care less what works on him. His first step should be to step away from the keyboard and move out of his parents’ basement.