Blogs / Bad Astronomy

Roger Ebert is best known as a movie critic on TV, but he has been writing movie reviews for far longer. I’ve read a great number of his columns and his writing is in general excellent, with an obvious and profound depth of understanding of movies.

Ebert has a fierce intellect backing up his writing, and that is on display very well in his review of the execrable "eXpelled: No Intelligence Allowed", the creationist "documentary" that is so chock full of lies that the creators’ pants will be on fire for centuries. Ben Stein was the host of this steaming pile of celluloid, and Ebert aims his keyboard directly at him.

Ebert’s review is dead on target, and I recommend reading it. "eXpelled" was a major flop and will most likely sink beneath the waves of history, but don’t think for a moment that the people out there trying to promote creationism won’t use the same slimy tactics again and again. Being aware of them is half the battle.

This post sat as a draft for a long time, and I should have posted it ages ago. It’s about the election, but it’s something we should all keep in mind anyway, for now and forever.

Watch this video. We need more like it. And I’m amazed some people can’t figure this out. it’s really pretty simple.

Hat tip to Crooks and Liars.

UPDATE (Nov. 4 11:00 p.m.): Great news! Proposition 48 was crushed, losing by a 3-to-1 vote.

In Colorado, Proposition 48 is up for vote on Tuesday. It is a rather simple statement; here it is in its entirety on the Colorado ballot:

Shall there be an amendment to the Colorado constitution defining the term “person” to include any human being from the moment of fertilization as “person” is used in those provisions of the Colorado constitution relating to inalienable rights, equality of justice, and due process of law?

Basically, this amendment to the Colorado Constitution would define a person as an legal entity at the moment a human sperm fertilizes an egg.

Prop 48 is ridiculous for any number of legal reasons. For example, if a woman who is pregnant for a day has a few drinks which cause damage to the embryo, can she be charged with reckless endangerment? What if she takes medicine that saves her but endangers the embryo? If I drive a pregnant woman around, can I use the HOV 3 lanes?

There are other vital issues, like how granting civil rights to a collection of cells takes away many civil rights of women, and the huge increase in governmental involvement this would mean in people’s lives. These are important to be sure, but not the point I want to make here. Also, these are age-old arguments, and in fact I can see where intelligent people can come down on opposite sides of them.

The real point is, Prop 48 isn’t about science, and it’s not even about legal issues. It’s about religion. This proposition is obviously based solely on religious beliefs; there is little reason outside of that to even bring the argument up that a fertilized egg is entitled to rights as a human being. It is only the belief that the human soul enters the cell at that moment that this is an issue at all.

Proposition 48 is religion trying to create legislation, pure and simple.

And it’s based on flawed reasoning. Try this thought experiment: you’re walking down the street, and you see a building on fire. You enter it to help anyone out, and see it’s a lab. On one side is a five-year-old boy, and the other is a petri dish clearly labeled as having a dozen fertilized eggs in it. You only have time to rescue the boy or the eggs. What do you do?

I would argue that it would be, ironically, an inhuman act to rescue the dish. Yet, according to the law if Prop 48 passes, you would have just chosen to let 12 human beings die to save one.

To me, those cells are just that: cells. There is nothing there that makes them human other than their DNA and their potential to grow.

So this leaves the actual question: what makes us human?

We don’t even have a definition of what life is — I can argue rather convincingly that fire is alive — let alone what it is to be human. And since we are talking legal issues here, you cannot state that it has to do with when a soul enters a body. I want to be perfectly clear about that, since that is an outright and clear violation of the First Amendment. The government cannot legislate religious beliefs.

I have smart readers. Can anyone here give me a reason, besides a religious one, that a fertilized egg is a human being? I’m willing to listen.

But let me help you here. It won’t fly to say that it has the coding (DNA) to become a human. Any cell in the body has that. I wouldn’t even accept that it has potential to be human, because the egg and sperm individually have potential to become human, if only they meet. You might counter and say that an egg already has that step done, but there are still many more on the way to being human. An egg can’t become a human without a lot of outside help (from the mother’s body), so the fertilization, while critical, is just one more step in the process. If any number of those steps fail, you don’t get a human out of it.

And if you wonder where I think the humanity begins in all this, I’ll say I don’t know. I don’t think it’s necessarily definable. I might — might — be talked into saying a fetus becomes human once brain activity starts. Many definitions of death are when brain activity stops, so that at least is reciprocal. But even then it’s difficult. What brain activity? Thought? Conscious thought? Does that make an adult gorilla more human than a five-day-old embryo?

And this, this, finally brings me to the ultimate point here: we are trying to define something here that is fundamentally undefinable. Being human is not a line in the sand where you can say, this is human and this isn’t. I can tell when something is well over the line, like a cat, or a rock, or Rory Calhoun, but something closer to the line is very hard to delineate. Biologists still argue over whether viruses are alive.

Proposition 48 is bad science, bad religion, and bad law. Even if you are religious, and you believe God breathes a soul into a fertilized egg, it’s still a bad idea. Your religion may have a majority in Colorado right now, but it may not always. Separation of Church and State is a fragile thing, a wall made of nothing but ideas. And as we have seen, over and over again, ideas can be stomped flat by ideologues. Your ideas may be next.

I try to think carefully about my own feelings, my own "beliefs" if you will. I hesitate to call them that, because I associate belief with faith, with thinking something is true without evidence. But it also commonly means just things you think are true, no matter why you do.

Anyway, its important to sit back sometimes and look at something you think to be true, and examine it. Why do you think it? What’s the evidence? Have things changed since you first adopted that position?

With the election coming up, I find myself doing this more often. And then Rebecca Watson at Skepchick sent me a note about the issue of gay marriage. Proposition 8 in California goes up for vote on the 4th, and if passed will basically outlaw gay marriage in that state. Rebecca helped make a very interesting video about it, comparing gay marriage to interracial marriage. Watch the video, then read on below.

Done? OK, good. Now first, my own thoughts are that being gay is not a choice, it’s just something you are, just like being heterosexual. You don’t choose that either! So to discriminate based on orientation is silly. If you have a distaste for gay people, well, that’s your own feeling. I don’t necessarily condemn it, as long as people understand that it’s a subjective, personal thing. I loathe cucumbers, but I don’t want to amend the state Constitution to forbid others from even putting it in their salads.

The video is interesting; my first reaction to it, honestly, was the thought that bigotry against gays is different than against race. Then I thought about it some more, and I had a hard time coming up with evidence for that conjecture. How are they different? Being gay is no more a choice than being white, or Asian, or black. Many religious texts have bad things to say about gays, but then many have bad things to say about blacks (like the Book of Mormon, and the Bible see the note at the bottom of this entry). Yet our country has striven to ensure blacks have the same rights as whites — somewhat imperfectly, certainly, but we’re trying. So how is being gay different?

Even if someone were to come up with some difference — and I’m willing to listen — then the video still has impact. I would think that most people have little or no issues with interracial couples, and ones who do are an endangered species (I hope). So by changing the wording of the video a little bit, it contrasts feelings about homosexuality with feelings about race. It forces you to examine your thoughts on both. We already have far better feelings about race as a country than we did a few decades ago. Yes, a lot of ugliness in the populace is surfacing about Obama, but I still think that kind of person is in the minority. That contrasts pretty strongly with feelings about sexual orientation.

So my first reaction to the video was, I think, way off. I think now I was wrong because gayness and race aren’t that dissimilar, and even if they are, that’s not the point of the video. It’s to reveal bigotry in any of its guises, and for that it does a pretty good job.

The video itself may actually have some impact on Prop 8. Hard to say. But it’s had an impact on me, and in an interesting way. I hope that people will watch videos like that, and examine their own "beliefs". Even though it’s October, it’s always a good time for a little mental spring cleaning.

Note added later: I originally said the Bible had bad things to say about blacks. After reading the comments, and looking into this deeper, I discovered that this is a relatively recent interpretation. The Bible essentially condones slavery, and that was used to support the idea of black slavery, and the "Curse of Ham" (what I was basing my statement on) was interpreted to mean blacks. So I was wrong about the Bible saying bad things about blacks in particular. I’ll note, however, that the Old Testament, specifically Leviticus, is chock full of other horrors to our modern sense. The point is, looking to religious texts you will find plenty of examples of intolerance. The Sermon on the Mount — the best speech in the Bible — is cherry picked or ignored by people who use the Bible on which to base their own intolerance.

I simply cannot understand how Texas manages to exist day after day. The rampant insanity of the government in that state makes it seem likely that Texas will simply fly off the face of the Earth and spin into the Sun.

The latest shooting-itself-in-the-foot-moment for the Lone Star State is based on a panel to create its state science curriculum (oh, you already know where this is going, dontcha now?). Out of the six seats on the panel, three are going to creationists! And not just any run-of-the-mill creationists, but one of them is Stephen C. Meyer, director of the Discovery Institute.

I will pause a moment while the air leaks back into your room.

Ready? OK then, let me say this again: Texas has placed a creationist who runs the Discovery institute — a hotbed of creationist deceptions — on a panel that will decide what "science" the children of Texas will learn.

And who will lead this panel of three reality-based scientists and three people dedicated to destroying reality? Why, it’s our old friend Donald McLeroy! Remember him? He’s a creationist. He hates science. He thinks abstinence-only education works (if you want teen girls to get STDs and get pregnant, then you’d be right). And he’s proven that he has no business being within three hundred yards of any sort of educational process.

So if you live in Texas, what can you do? First, educate yourself: read what others have to say on this topic, including Texas Citizens for Science, PZ Myers, the Houston Chronicle, and even Little Green Footballs (a website with which I agree on almost no other topic).

Then, write letters. Tell your friends. Send them here, or to those other links. Go to the Texas Citizens for Science site. If you have a blog, write about this, because when exposed to light this creationist ideologues tend to wither from embarrassment.

Unfortunately, McLeroy was appointed by Texas Governor Rick Perry, and the next election for governor isn’t until 2010. But don’t forget: Perry is the guy who put an anti-science, inexperienced man in charge of Texas education, a man who has proven beyond any doubt whatsoever that not only is he wrong for the job, but that he will destroy science education in Texas… and Texas is a state that drives textbook sales throughout the country. This affects all of us. One man — one creationist — can unduly influence the entire country. And this must be stopped.

Otherwise…

Texas (and science education in the U.S.):

Readers, BABloggees, potential commenters: In the past couple of days I’ve had to lay the smackdown to some commenters. Now, I don’t mind the occasional handing of the head to someone who so desperately needs it, but my time is limited, and I cannot stamp FAIL on everyone’s forehead no matter how richly they deserve it.

Instead, I will point you to two things:

1) My commenting policy. It boils down to, "Don’t be a jerk." Hint: if you’re wondering whether you’re stepping over the line of my policy, you probably are.

2) More importantly, perhaps, is my statement on posts dealing with politics and religion. Face it: the next week or two I will not be posting less on politics. I’ll be posting more. A large fraction of the time McCain or Palin open their mouths, some antiscience nonsense spews forth (as opposed to what comes out all the time). When they do (or in the event that Obama and Biden do as well — but if you don’t understand that’s more likely on the R side than the D one, you might want to spend some quality time in my archives) I will call them out. If you don’t like it, then I hear the electrons are much tastier on other blogs. Give them a bite.

So this guy thinks that his "unusual" amaranth planet looks like the Indian elephant god Ganesh:

Now, maybe it’s just me, but to me it looks like a plain old elephant. But then, I don’t worship Ganesh. Lots of people do, though, and so of course this means the guy is getting lots of visitors, and he thinks it has cured his illnesses. How miraculous that this pachydermic plant happened to grow in the garden of a believer!

… or is it? Amaranths grow into all sorts of odd shapes. It didn’t take me long on Flickr to find one like this:

If you worship Cthulhu, you’re in luck! Though, if you worship Cthulhu, you’re probably never in luck.

When I lived in Northern California, amaranths like this were everywhere, including right outside my building. They would constantly crack me up. Why? Because I suspect they were trying to tell me something:

And as a final snark, let me add something: the name of this particular variety of amaranth? It’s called Elephant Head.

Images from Santa Rosa’s Crescent Moon Farm and pixelviz’s Flickr set. Tip o’ the turban to Hemant Mehta.