Email: I get schooled about Obamacare

June 30, 2012 • 12:48 pm

In response to my post praising the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on “Obamacare,” I received an email with the header, all in caps, “HEY COYNE, GET A CLUE”. I reproduce it in its entirety, though the name has been changed to protect the unhinged.  I have reproduced the email exactly as sent:

YOU SHOULD STICK TO BIOLOGY AS  YOUR COMMENTS ON POLITICS PROVE YOU ARE CLUELESS

AND CHILD, IF YOU WILL READ THE ATTACHED, YOU WILL SEE WHY I AM  QUALIFIED TO SAY THE THINGS I DO

[Name redacted]

First, for some very stupid reason, most people seem to think it is wrong to tell some of the truth about yourself.  Well they can kiss my butt as I care less what the illogical, irrational and not too bright think.

I’ve written this because I figure others may want to know what I want to know about what the experience and knowledge those informing me have. So here are a some things about me. (And IF you want a list of negatives, just ask as truth is truth.)

Those who know me well, know I’m a very truthful person. In 1964, I was given the nick name “Jackass John” [JAC: I have replace the real but similar nickname with a pseudonym] by a co-worker who said he did so due to my always telling the truth and most people do not like hearing the truth.

I will be most happy to both supply the contact information of others who will attest to my truthfulness. And I am most willing to take any and all scientific lie detection tests. (I hate liars! They disgust me & this is one of the main reasons I have no respect for Obama.)

As Walt Whitman said: “If you’ve done it, it ain’t bragging!”*

I am much more generally experienced and more generally Knowledge than are most my age of 77.

I say this as I have lived in three countries ten states and in twenty cities. For five years, I lived in Cerro De Pasco, Peru which is over 14,000 feet and in Honduras “cloud forests” for about a year.

I have had many more professions than most even think of having,  Some are – Paratrooper, Lifeguard & Deep Sea Diver, a Cafe owner, a manufacturing supervisor (NCR – TRW) and an industrial engineer for XEROX

I’ve also done many more different types of things than most ever come close to doing. I’ve sailed on more different types of ships, driven more different types of vehicles, flown in more types of aircraft, ridden on more different types of trains and fired more different types of weapons. than most have, I’ve done all the things, (plus others) listed in signature block at the end of this.

Tests I’ve taken prove I use my “Gifted Level” IQ nearly twice as effectively as most people use their intelligence, My tested reading skills show I read at nearly double the speed which most with college degrees are able to read at and do so with high comprehension. (Read more than most do as well.)

Listening comprehension tests proved the average college educated supervisor at NCR’s Electronics Division only scored 23 percent in a listening comprehension test. (My score was 46%). (As part of a supervisors job is to listen effectively and as they knew they were being tested on their listening skills, think how poorlyothers listening skills are!) At the end of the course, my listening comprehension test score was 96 percent. And it was the tightest score ever gotten by anyone in any  company world wide.  (I have no idea why my listening skills are better than others, all I know is what tests showed.)

I live my life as I define Science:

“Science is the Ever-Expanding, Never-Ending, On-Going and Self Correcting Search for Truth!'”

I go where the evidence and the facts take me, And IF they substantiate the positions I which already support, Great!.

Yet, IF the evidence and the facts do NOT substantiate my presently held positions on issues, I change my position so if is supported by the facts

Very Sadly, I find this is not true for most others. I’ve found most people will simply either refuse to learn and/or will deny any facts which do not support what they already believe.

I make a great effort to be as fair as possible and attempt to not make any judgements until I have sufficient facts to know what I am doing.

I have repeatedly risked my personal safety for others. This includes for Black Civil Rights and when stopping crimes in progress. (eight so far.)

So combining my extensive experience & my knowledge with my intelligence and skills with my normally assuring I have more than sufficient facts to back me up, the odds of anyone proving me to be either logically or factually wrong are about zero!

I Thank You For your Time.

Please, Take Care!

[Name redacted]

A 77 year old Pro Iraq War Agnostic Atheist Activist, a former member of management in some Top American 500 corporations and a 101st Airborne Vet.

A Truth Telling, No BS, Women Chasing, (& Catching them 92 times), Iconoclastic, Fire Walking, Crime Stopping, Deep Sea and Scuba Diving, Philosophizing, Life Saving, Paratrooping, Bungee Jumping, Spelunking, 1 and 3 Meter Spring Board Diving, Partying/Dancing, Rock Climbing, Rapid Running, Expert Shooting, Beach VolleyBall Playing and “Barking” Grumpy Old “Son Of A Beach.”

I see he’s beaten the Islamic martyrs’ reward by a full 20 women—impressive!  But I still don’t know what I’m supposed to learn about Obamacare.  The dude spends a gazillion words about how awesome he is, and never tells me where I went wrong.

This proves something that we’ve all learned in the last year: atheists can be just as crazy as the looniest believers.  Well, I hope he enjoys seeing his words here.

________

*This reminds me what Walter Brennan used to say as “Grandpappy Amos” on the t.v. show The Real McCoys:  “No brag—just fact!”

Bizarre caterpillars

June 30, 2012 • 10:37 am

Caterpillars are slow and often tasty, making them prime targets for predation, particularly by birds.  In response, they’ve evolved a number of defenses, including bodily toxins and bright warning coloration to alert predators of those toxins, nasty spines, cryptic coloration to hide themselves, or even mimicry of other animals, like snakes, to frighten predators. Several of these defenses can be seen in the images below.

Environmental graffiti has collected 15 pictures of weird, scary, or downright bizarre caterpillars, and it’s worth looking at all of them.  I’ll present only five (click to enlarge); as far as I can see, every single one of these was misidentified on the site.  Readers who know these things—help!

This was misidentified at the site as the Pale Tussock moth (Calliteara pudibunda). I have no idea what it is.
Also misidentified at the site as a stinging rose caterpillars (Parasa indetermina),

This one mimics a snake:

You can find more photos of bizarre caterpillars (and other weird insects) at Slackstack.  Here are two (sources and identity unspecified):


Sam Harris on spirituality

June 30, 2012 • 4:41 am

Sam Harris’s new post, “In defense of ‘spiritual’“, tries to reclaim that word from its associations with various species of woo—especially religion. Trying to extend it beyond Hitchens’s construal as “something that inspires awe,” Sam wants the word to apply to forms of “other-consciousness,” including those induced by drugs and meditation:

We must reclaim good words and put them to good use—and this is what I intend to do with “spiritual.” I have no quarrel with Hitch’s general use of it to mean something like “beauty or significance that provokes awe,” but I believe that we can also use it in a narrower and, indeed, more transcendent sense.

Of course, “spiritual” and its cognates have some unfortunate associations unrelated to their etymology—and I will do my best to cut those ties as well. But there seems to be no other term (apart from the even more problematic “mystical” or the more restrictive “contemplative”) with which to discuss the deliberate efforts some people make to overcome their feeling of separateness—through meditation, psychedelics, or other means of inducing non-ordinary states of consciousness. And I find neologisms pretentious and annoying. Hence, I appear to have no choice: “Spiritual” it is.

I agree that we should try to unload the woo-ish cargo with which the word has been freighted, but that will be a tough job—something that Sam simply can’t do on his own. It would require all of us using it in his particular sense, and then explaining what we mean when we use it.  Given that the word has already been co-opted by many accommodationists, especially the Templeton Foundation and its minions (people like Elaine Ecklund, for instance, regularly conflate “spirituality” with “religiosity”), I can’t see the disentangling of meanings happening any time soon.

Sam is, he says, writing a new book. I don’t know what it’s about, but appears to deal with different types of consciousness (“In writing my next book, I will have to confront the animosity that many people feel for the term “spiritual.”)  That, at least, is what his talk in Melbourne implied.

There is considerable value in discussing alterations of “normal consciousness,” phenomena I experienced not only in college during the Sixties, but in sporadic attempts at meditation thereafter. Anyone who has ingested psychedelic drugs is aware of the tremendous changes in perception that they induce—changes that can have lifelong effects. I refer in particular to the feeling of “oneness with the universe” that has been the butt of so many anti-hippie jokes. (e.g., “A Buddhist goes up to a hot dog vendor and tells him, ‘Make me one with everything.'”)  It’s not something that can be easily dismissed, particularly because of its connection with similar feelings of religious people, feelings amply documented in William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience.  None of that, of course, validates the truth of religious claims.  But certainly such experiences require both discussion and scientific study.  Equally certainly, Sam’s book will be worth reading, even if you disagree with it.

A side note: to me, the great virtue of Sam Harris is that he doesn’t pull punches, but says exactly what he thinks, even when it’s unpopular; and, above all, he makes you reexamine your own opinions.  He has made me, for example, rethink the potential value of torture, of the effects of coddling Islam, whether moral values might be objective after all, and whether we have “free will” in any meaningful sense.  And I think he’s been treated unfairly on several counts, with people misconstruing his views—sometimes, it seems, wilfully. One friend, for example, dismissed much of his talk in Melbourne about death because it smacked too much of “woo”.  But if you listen to that talk, there’s no woo at all: just a suggestion that we can improve our lives by being mindful about how we think.

The ability to make us re-examine our cherished values—even if we wind up keeping them anyway—is the highest virtue of skepticism.  If we believe something, we need to be sure we have good reasons for doing so.  And among all the New Atheists, Sam has embodied that virtue most fully and diversely. He keeps us on the rails of rationality.

Caturday felid: Cat answers phone

June 30, 2012 • 3:58 am

Although I’m not a huge fan of the species Canis lupus familiaris, I do appreciate those cats who have some doglike behaviors. My first cat, a black charmer named Pangur, who lived 18 years, would fetch sticks when they were thrown.  Here’s an even more awesome behavior from a Russian cat (Russia seems to be producing some awesome cat videos lately): this one actually brings a ringing phone to its owner.

Posting will be light here for about ten days, as I’m attending the huge evolution meeting in Ottawa. As usual, Matthew and Greg will be filling in for me, and of course the weekly felids will make their appearance, since I haven’t missed one since I started this site 3.5 years ago (has it really been that long?).

A little mush for Friday

June 29, 2012 • 11:59 am

Regular readers will know that although I’m tough on creationists, accommodationists, and various specie of morons, I’m a bit of a softy on certain topics, e.g., rabbits, baby ducks, and specimens of Felis catus. I suspect many of you feel likewise. So perhaps you’ll appreciate an end-of-the-week upper: a BuzzFeed compilation of “21 pictures that will restore your faith in humanity.”  (This presumes, of course, that you have lost your faith in humanity and that it can be restored by photos of firefighters resuscitating kittens.)

I show a few of the pictures below and there are others (including dogs, not shown here) at the site.

 Repentant Chicago Christians who showed up at a gay pride parade to apologize for homophobia in the Church:

Another scene from the parade. Both photos by Michelle Gantner:

A villager carrying stranded kittens to dry land during a flood in Cuttack, India (photo by Biswaranajan Rout/AP):

A man gives his shoes to a homeless girl in Rio de Janeiro:

Firefighters rescuing cats from house fires, with the first one getting oxygen (first photo by Tom Bauer, Missoulian; second by Chris Bauer/AP):

This is sweet but sad: a note that an elderly lady handed to a waiter along with a $20 tip:

And this one will brand me forever as a softy, but I can’t help but close with it. It’s titled “two best friends on a swing”:

If you like dogs, there is an awesome series of a man rescuing a dog that had fallen into the sea, and the tears of its grateful owner.

The Telegraph blames atheists for the German ban on circumcision

June 29, 2012 • 8:38 am

As many of you know, a German court recently ruled that circumcision of infants abrogated the right of infants to be protected from bodily harm, and therefore was illegal until the child became old enough to give informed consent. According to CBS News:

“The religious freedom of the parents and their right to educate their child would not be unacceptably compromised, if they were obliged to wait until the child could himself decide to be circumcised,” the court added.

The ruling has now set a precedent that anyone in the future who performs a circumcision on a child not old enough to consent could potentially be breaking the law. Experts say that the decision would not be enforceable in other jurisdictions but because of the legal limbo and possibility of charges brought upon them, doctors may decline to do the procedure, according to the New York Times.

The Jews will be outraged, of course, but this is the decision of a regional court, in Cologne, and would have to be upheld by higher courts before it became German law.  I don’t have strong feelings about this issue, but I know some readers do.

But I do have strong feelings about a piece in the Torygraph that blames this ban on—who else?—atheists.  Yes, those atheists who are constantly battling religious “freedom,” including the freedom to mutilate one’s child. In the paper, Brendan O’Neill weighs in in a piece called, “The rebranding of circumcision as ‘child abuse’ echoes the ugly anti-Semitism of medieval Europe.” That title says it all: he plays the anti-Semitic card for all it’s worth:

Many secularist campaigners are cock-a-hoop about the ruling. They believe their description of circumcision as “child abuse”, as a cruel operation that ignores the UN-guaranteed “rights of the child”, is radical and caring. But in truth it echoes centuries’ worth of nasty anti-circumcision posturing by people who hate certain religious faiths. In Medieval Europe, as pointed out in the book The Covenant of Circumcision, Jew-baiters often depicted circumcision as “cruel and grotesque”. The “barbarous and cruel Jews” were slated for callously snipping off their own boys’ foreskins and for secretly desiring to do the same to Christian boys, too. These “merciless” creatures were described by one English writer as “foreskinne-clippers”. The modern atheist’s description of circumcision as “child abuse”, though used to attack both Jewish and Muslim communities, is only an updated, more PC version of the old anti-Semites’ description of it as “cruel and grotesque”.

The labelling of religious practices as “child abuse” is the most cynical tactic in the armoury of today’s so-called New Atheists. They are effectively using children as human shields, as a cover under which they and their beloved state might interfere in both family life and the realm of religious conscience in order to reprimand people for believing the wrong things and carrying our “cruel” practices. If you think they will stop with the banning of a physical practice like circumcision, think again. Richard Dawkins has argued that “bringing [children] up Catholic” is a form of “mental abuse”. Another New Atheist argues that children “have a human right not to have their minds crippled by exposure to other people’s bad ideas”. What is being attacked here is the fundamental right of parents and communities to pass on their beliefs to their offspring.

History tells us that the rebranding of religious practices as child abuse can have terrible consequences. Many anti-Jewish pogroms in the past were justified on the basis that Jews abused children. The FBI’s insane invasion of the headquarters of the Branch Davidian religious cult in Waco, Texas, in 1993 was likewise justified on the basis of halting child abuse. That led to the deaths of 82 people – 28 of them children.

First of all, I doubt that New Atheism had anything to do with the judges’ ruling. Second, is it really a right to cut off part of your child’s penis because it’s a religious dictate? Is religiously-motivated female genital mutilation then a right? How much religiously-motivated cutting is permissible?

And people should think twice about what Dawkins said before rejecting it.  It’s okay to teach your children truths about the world, and imbue them with some semblance of morality (“share your toys”), but atheists don’t think it’s okay to tell your children lies.  (Further, no atheist is saying that such indoctrination should be outlawed, only that it’s wrong).

And it’s even worse to tell kids lies that warp and terrify them, a practice routinely applied to Catholic children. Many readers can attest to the harm that was done them by being filled with religious nonsense, guilt, and thoughts of eternal damnation.  In contrast, few could claim, I think, that they were permanently damaged by being brought up without religion.

h/t: Grania

More Bible LOLz: God’s Golden Hemorrhoids

June 29, 2012 • 5:59 am

So in the book I Samuel of the Bible, the Philistines smite the Israelites and steal the Ark of the Covenant.  They bring it to the temple of Dagon, but Dagon’s image is found the next day shattered (I Samuel 5)

4 And when they arose early on the morrow morning, behold, Dagon was fallen upon his face to the ground before the ark of the LORD; and the head of Dagon and both the palms of his hands were cut off upon the threshold; only the stump of Dagon was left to him.

Clearly Yahweh is ticked off, but that’s no surprise.  The Philistines, realizing that they’re in trouble, pick up the Ark and carry it away, intending to put it somewhere else, but it’s too late.  God begins filling the land with pesky mice, slaying people, and, amusingly, afflicting the people with hemorrhoids:

9 And it was so, that, after they had carried it about, the hand of the LORD was against the city with a very great destruction: and he smote the men of the city, both small and great, and they had emerods in their secret parts.. . .

11 So they sent and gathered together all the lords of the Philistines, and said, Send away the ark of the God of Israel, and let it go again to his own place, that it slay us not, and our people: for there was a deadly destruction throughout all the city; the hand of God was very heavy there.

12 And the men that died not were smitten with the emerods: and the cry of the city went up to heaven.

The term “emerods” has been construed variously—boils, “buboes” (the swellings from plague), anal fistulas, and so on, but to me the translation that makes the most sense is “hemorrhoids,” not only because of the similar sound (so that the translators thought that’s what the word meant), but because they’re in the Philistines’ “secret parts.”

Lacking Preparation H, the Philistines asked their priests what to do to rid themselves of their afflictions. The priests tell them to return the ark to the Israelites, but along with it they have to send a treasure: five golden mice and five golden images of hemorrhoids (1 Samuel 6):

4 Then said they, What shall be the trespass offering which we shall return to him? They answered, Five golden emerods, and five golden mice, according to the number of the lords of the Philistines: for one plague was on you all, and on your lords.

5 Wherefore ye shall make images of your emerods, and images of your mice that mar the land; and ye shall give glory unto the God of Israel: peradventure he will lighten his hand from off you, and from off your gods, and from off your land.. . .

11And they laid the ark of the LORD upon the cart, and the coffer with the mice of gold and the images of their emerods.. .

Each golden hemorrhoid was an offering on behalf of a different afflicted city:

17 And these are the golden emerods which the Philistines returned for a trespass offering unto the LORD; for Ashdod one, for Gaza one, for Askelon one, for Gath one, for Ekron one;

An artistic rendering:

You can find a more extensive discussion of this vexing Biblical issue here.

Quote of the week: does “methodological naturalism” prevent science from investigating the supernatural?

June 29, 2012 • 4:09 am

I wrote a bit about this paper by Boudy et al. when it was only a manuscript, but now it’s been published in Science and Education (reference below, free online).  It deals with the constant accommodationst refrain that science is absolutely wedded to the notion of “intrinsic methodological naturalism (“IMN”; the view that it is an a priori rule when doing science to rule out the supernatural).  As I wrote yesterday, since the supernatural is off limits under IMN, all supernatural claims, including those about God, ESP, precognition, and so on, become immune from empirical investigation.

That is palpable nonsense. Science can, and has, constantly tested supernatural claims.  Refuting creationism is the premier example.  So why do accommodationists constantly make the erroneous claim that science can’t test the supernatural?  Boudry et al. explain it in their paper. (“IDC” below refers to “intelligent design creationism”).

Perhaps some will object, saying that the supernatural encompasses things that are by definition immune to empirical investigation. And you can define “supernatural” that way, but that is not only tautological, but doesn’t comport with how most people see the idea.

All theistic religions make claims about how a deity interacts with the world in certain ways, and those claims can be investigated, at least in principle, with the tools of science.  We can’t, of course, disprove the existence of God.  But we can make that existence less (or, unlikely, more) probable by examining the ways that His adherents claim that he acts, or the things they say about His nature.  But on to the quote of the week:

In a way reminiscent of Hume’s Dialogues, theist and non-theist defenders of science have advocated IMN as a way of dissociating science from atheism and consolidating a truce between (evolutionary) science and religion. The received idea seems to be that, as  [Robert] Pennock writes, confronting supernatural claims with science ‘‘inadvertently help[s] the ID cause’’ (Pennock 2003, p. 156), because it links evolution with atheism. By contrast, relegating the supernatural to a different domain provides reassurance to religious believers and allows science educators to retain the support of theistic evolutionists and religious liberals in the battle against anti-evolutionist forces. Understandable as this may be in the context of the ongoing efforts of IDC advocates to sneak their pseudoscience in to the classroom, it is seriously misguided. First, excluding the supernatural by fiat fuels the old accusations of metaphysical bias, and allows IDC proponents to cast themselves in the role of open-minded truth-lovers. Second, the letter of IMN conflicts with actual scientific arguments against supernatural design, a discrepancy which IDC proponents have been quick to point out. Third, IMN does a disservice to the epistemic status of science, inviting the view that it is just one way of knowing among other, presumably deeper ones. Fourth, it fails to appreciate the threat that the naturalization of science poses to religion. Pennock’s concern about the perceived conflict between science and religion is a legitimate one, but muddled philosophical reasoning will do little to avert that conflict. Science educators should not equate evolution with atheism, but neither should they pretend that the conflict between science and religion is wholly imaginary. Most religious believers would find out for themselves in any case.

For these reasons, and for the philosophical shortcomings we have reviewed elsewhere, scientists and science educators would be well-advised to reconsider their standard strategy in dealing with supernaturalist pseudoscience. Reconciling science and religion on the basis of IMN happens at the expense of philosophical and scientific integrity, and it is therefore misguided. It leaves the public with the impression that evolution by natural selection appears to win the scientific debate only because supernatural designers were already carefully excluded from the outset. This is the philosophical crack into which IDC theorists are currently trying to drive their ideological wedge.

The next time you hear an accommodationist say that science can’t tackle the supernatural, just respond by giving a dozen or so examples where it has.

______________

Boudry, M., S. Blancke, and J. Braeckman. 2012. Grist to the mill of anti-evolutionism: The failed strategy of ruling the supernatural out of science by philosophical fiat. Science and Education Online DOI 10.1007/s111910=-012-9446-8